An interview with Joseph Melskens from Paccus. A Dutch absed company who is wotrking on the new revelation in Force Feedback based Joysticks, fluid head based force feedback. Paccus developed a totally new kind of joystick. One which is real 3D, is as precise and fast as a game mouse, has extra programmable keys, but most important has a unique (patented) fluid head force feedback, that can pull you out of your seat! This is not a toy, it is made from metal. We also have some photos ogf the prototype.

Samsung unveils solar-powered 'Blue Earth' phone billed as the world's first solar-powered touchscreen phone. For starters, the back side of the Blue Earth has been outfitted with a large solar panel. They say that this panel will be able to generate enough electricity to make a phone call any time that you want. Presumably, you'll need to holster the phone to the outside of your pants to do that, because not too many of the sun's rays will be able to penetrate your backpack or pocket. 

The phone can be set in "Eco Mode" too to lower the screen brightness, reduce the backlight duration, and shut off the Bluetooth. Like the Motorola's green 'Renew' phone, the Blue Earth's shell is molded out of plastic derived from recycled water bottles, and its 'small and light' packaging is made out of recycled paper, according to Samsung (which also notes that both the handset and charger are beryllium-, phthalate-, and brominated flame retardant-free). Look for the Samsung Blue Earth to hit the UK in the second half of this year.

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Rivatuner has been updated towards version 2.23 This release has a number of updates and fixes. But please do check out the changelist.

RivaTuner is a complete powerful tweaking environment, providing you everything you may need to tune NVIDIA GPU based display adapters. The widest driver-level Direct3D / OpenGL and system tuning options, flexible profiling system allowing to make custom settings on per-application basis, both driver-level and low-level hardware access modes, unique diagnostic and real-time hardware monitoring features and exclusive power user oriented tools like built-in registry editor and patch script engine.

For novice users, we have a guide to help you through Rivatuner and setup fan speeds and overclocks on your graphics card. This guide will hopefully help you understand how to use the features that Rivatuner provides.

Download click here.

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The Galaxy GeForce 9800GTX PLUS tested - Galaxy recently released this product, custom PCB, custom cooling, custom bracket, HDMI output, black DVI and backplate.

I sometimes wonder why a small company consistently can push out striking products like that and the bigger AIBs mainly focus on the reference design. An absolutely interesting graphics card at many levels.

Check out this Guru3D review right here at this URL.

 

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A fellah called stangowner created a Vista Sidebar Gadget that uses Rivatuner's low level hardware monitor for stats. I've finally released it on Microsoft's site. If your Rivatuner install is reporting back values that you would like to see in the sidebar, then install this gadget and have it easily accessible.

Values will vary depending on the model card you have and its capabilities. Values could include:

• various core clock speeds - memory clock speed
• GPU temp (as well as other misc temps)
• fan duty and speed
• voltage
• GPU usage

Read the help tab in the gadget config for explicit instructions and configuration information. We have a thread open on this tool (visited by programmer) right here.

Download: click here

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Galaxy GeForce 9800GTX PLUS test - Galaxy recently released this product, custom PCB, custom cooling, custom bracket, HDMI output, black DVI and backplate. I sometimes wonder why a small company consistently can push out striking products like that and the bigger AIBs mainly focus on the reference design.

Yummie ... recently we reported about the QNAP's 4-bay TS-439 Pro Turbo NAS, which was perfectly fine for the average home-based storage junkie, small businesses need something with a bit more potential.

Meet the TS-809 Pro Turbo, an 8-bay behemoth capable of housing 8 SATA hard drives (up to 16TB, or .98 million copies of Friday the 13th, when 2TB HDDs are widely available). The unit gets powered by a 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo, which definitely means that your next NAS may posses more processing power than the antiquated PC it's connected to.

Additionally, there's 2GB of DDR2 RAM, read / write rates of 126MB/s and 111Mb/s (respectively), and support for a litany of business-related advanced features.

Equipped with eight 640GB HDDs the unit would consume roughly 81W. No word on pricing, I think it's safe to say it won't be cheap.

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We mentioned this numerous times already yet NVIDIA is moving forward with the launch schedule of the GeForce GTS 200 series, which really are relabeled current-generation G92 GPU based products.

The GeForce GTS 240 and GTS 250 will be re-branded 9800 GT and 9800 GTX+ cards. It is believed that the product name changes will commence during CeBIT. One can expect NVIDIA partners to come up with cheaper SKUs that fit into the US $ 130 range, lower than the current $150 range 9800 GTX+ and ATI Radeon HD 4850 compete in.

The GTS 240 on the other hand, will be introduced soon with a newer price-range of around $100, lower than the $120 mark the 9800 GT revolves around. This should make it more competitive against the Radeon HD 4830, which is currently winning in the price/performance figure.

Also, the company is preparing a GeForce 9800 GT Green Edition, which carries forward the design methodology of the 9600 GT Green Edition: lowering the GPU voltage and slightly reducing the clock speeds. It is expected to carry clock speeds of 550/1375/900 MHz (core/shader/memory) against the reference 9800 GT specifications of 600/1500/900 MHz. The new SKU might be priced at a premium over the GTS 240, at around $ 120 [via vr-zone].

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S3 Graphics announced the latest addition to its power-efficient Chrome 500 Series graphics processor family, with the unveiling of an 850MHz clocked GDDR3 based Chrome 540 GTX. Today's users can convert an ordinary PC into a Hi-Def entertainment powerhouse for Dual-Stream Blu-ray and HD videos, using the newly defined DisplayPort digital interface, HDMI and Dual-Link DVI for seamless connectivity to the latest digital monitors and HDTVs.

Today's multimedia enthusiasts require extra GPU horsepower to perform high-quality HD video decoding, image post-processing, and stunning color enhancement when displaying the latest HD content on Blu-ray or streaming video-on-demand. With the Chrome 540 GTX, you now have the power to bring every movie experience to life, and enjoy bonus footage through Picture-in-Picture, all while enjoying 8 channels of high fidelity audio with the S3 Graphics built-in Dolby 7.1 digital surround sound processor.
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It's been a while since we did some good deals, yet news is boring today. Let me sort out some interesting gear we figured is nicely priced.

Today we'll handle some graphics cards:

NVIDIA

• GeForce 9800 GT 512MB, spotted as low as $111.99
• GeForce GTX 260 896MB Core 216 (!) priced at $229.99 but 199 USD after rebate !! very hot deal
• GeForce GTX 285 1024MB can be found for $341.99

ATI

• Radeon HD 4850 512MB, prices keep falling, spotted for $164.99 
• Radeon HD 4870 1024MB for just $245.99 hot
• Radeon HD 4870 X2 2048MB for $429.00

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The Escape From City 17 short film series is an adaptation based on the Half Life computer game saga by Valve Corporation. Originally envisioned as a project to test out numerous post production techniques, as well as a spec commercial, it ballooned into a multi part series.

Filmed guerilla style with no money, no time, no crew, no script, the first two episodes were made from beginning to end on a budget of $500 [via ggmania].

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