2.33 GHz Core Duo 17" MacBook Pro this Sunday?

The MacBook pro family may gain a new member this Sunday. The already popular MacBook pro allows users to run Windows XP. With its new 2.33GHz duel core processor it will surely satisfy the avid gamer in all of us.

The 2006 NAB (National Association of Broadcasters) conference is fast approaching and as any self-respectiing maclot knows, it can only mean one thing: new pro products. The Register is reporting that the new 17" MacBook Pro could debut as early as this Sunday and sport the 2.16GHz Core Duo with an outside chance of the new 2.33GHz Intel Core Duo making an appearance. Oddly enough, with the exception of the processor speed and screen size, all internals of the 17" should remain the same as the 15" MacBook Pro.

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Potato Powered Sound System

Something in our heads just screams "build me!" when we saw this little article about making a giant potato battery. Too bad it takes 500 pounds of potatos to power a "small sound system". We wonder when the first iPotato (ipod charger) will come out? It could be usefull for that farmer with an ipod. haha

I built a potato battery out of 500 pounds of potatoes. It powered a small sound system. With the help of the Red 76 crew I installed the battery and sound system in the back of a U-Haul truck and drove it around town inviting people to enter the truck and take a listen.

Batteries work by allowing electrons to pass from one electrode to another. In this case the potato provides phosphoric acid, which enables a chemical reaction causing electrons flow from copper to zinc. The zinc came from galvanized nails and copper came from small pieces of copper. You don't have to use potatoes; any acidic medium such as citrus fruit will work. I chose potatoes because they are traditional and cheap.

Each potato generates about 0.5 volts and 0.2 milliamperes. I connected groups of potatoes together in series to increase voltage and then connected these groups together in parallel to increase amperage. The entire 500 lb battery generated around 5 volts and 4 milliamperes.

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Illegal Number?

This is kind of funny. The court says "This program is illegal" and nerds find ways to make the court look stupid. This "illegal" number is obtained when the DeCSS code is compiled and converted into decimal form.

An illegal prime is a prime number which contains information forbidden by law to possess or distribute.

The first illegal prime to be announced, when interpreted a particular way, describes a computer program which bypasses copyright protection schemes on some DVDs. Because that program has been found illegal by courts in the United States of America, this has produced debate about whether the number itself could be considered illegal.

This question has never been tested in court, and it is possible that the number itself and its possession would be found to be legal, but not a particular interpretation of it.

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High-Tech way to Defrost

Dartmouth engineering professor Victor Petrenko and his team have developed new ways to control or alter ice, making it sticky or slippery.

Dartmouth College engineering professor Victor Petrenko, not to be confused with one of the Champions on Ice, has devised a way to use a burst of electricity to remove ice caked on walls or windows. For surfaces coated with a special film, the jolt gets rid of ice in less than a second, far less time than it takes to hack at it with an ice scraper.

While drivers might find easy-cleaning windshields convenient, the technology--called thin-film pulse electrothermal de-icing, or PETD--could have significant economic impact if widely deployed. It could, for example, cut the costs of repairing power lines downed by ice storms and keep plane windshields frost-free, decreasing fuel consumption.

In Sweden, civil engineers have tested PETD and decided to cover the Uddevalla Bridge in a 12-millimeter-thick PETD foil to keep it from icing over.

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Google Calendar BETA Up!

Its finally up and running! We played with it for a couple minutes and already love it. Its very easy and quick to use. Adding entries is a breeze. Its effective use of AJAX allows for many great features within the calendar. Things like changing how long an event lasts on the fly by just dragging the event. Comparable calendar software could costs hundreds. Defiantly worth a try. We give it a 5 out of 5! We know you'll love it too. And best of all, ITS FREE!

Google Calendar:

Seeing the big picture
With Google Calendar, you can see your friends' and family's schedules right next to your own; quickly add events mentioned in Gmail conversations or saved in other calendar applications; and add other interesting events that you find online.

Sharing events and calendars
You decide who can see your calendar and which details they can view. Planning an event? You can create invitations, send reminders and keep track of RSVPs right inside Google Calendar. Organizations can promote events, too.

Staying on schedule
You can set up automatic event reminders, including SMS notifications, and instantly bring up anything on your calendar with the built-in search tool.

Features

Calendar Sharing: Set up a calendar for your company softball team, and share it with the whole roster. (Your shortstop will never forget about practice again.) Or share with friends and family so you can view each other's schedules side by side.

Invitations: Create event invitations, send them to friends, and keep track of people's responses and comments, all in one place. Your friends can receive your invitation and post responses even if they don't use Google Calendar themselves.

Quick Add: Click anywhere on your calendar where an event belongs (or use the Quick Add link), and start typing. Google Calendar understands whole phrases like "Brunch with mom at Java Cafe 11am on Saturday," and will pop new events right into your agenda.

Gmail Integration: Add your friend's Super Bowl party to your calendar without ever leaving your Gmail inbox. Gmail now recognizes events mentioned in emails.

Search: Find the date of the Baxter family BBQ (you knew it was sometime this summer). Or, search public calendars to discover new events you're interested in and add them to your own calendar.

Mobile Access: Receive event reminders and notifications on your mobile phone.

Event Publishing: Share your organization's events with the world. Learn more with our Event Publisher Guide.

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Matrox Triplehead2Go

The Matrox Triplehead2Go splits a VGA connection into three VGA connections and tells your computer it's hooked up to one big 3840 x 1024 display. All the software seems to work fine for the various desktop configurations, and while there aren't too many games that can handle 3840 x 1024 out of the box, the included software can help get most common games up and running, and can even be extended by users to cover other titles. As for gaming, the setup comes highly recommended if you've got the graphics power to handle the added resolution. For productivity, the analog connections and further signal degradation due to three-way splitting makes the Triplehead2Go not be such a hot choice.

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Leaked PSone Emulator Pics for PSP

We arent sure how real this is but it seems logical for sony to cash in on PSone games again.

According to the fairly convincing screenshots, games cost will $15 each -- which sounds steep, but not unreasonable -- and will even be able to do multiplayer via WiFi networking. Of course, there's still no word on when this will be actually available, and the pics are from a tipster's "friend" who works as a "designer at Sony" (yeah, haven't heard that one before), which doesn't lend a whole lot of cred, but we'll let the pics speak for themselves.

Boot Camp: First Impressions

Intel Mac owners have begun to test out the new Boot Camp software from Apple and have found out several things:

- Boot Camp can load Vista. Or at least the Vista installer. Marc Orchant at ZDNet is one of those using a borrowed MacBook Pro, and he was able to load the Vista installer with no problem. Alas, his lender insisted on doing a full backup before allowing Orchant to go any further, so we have yet to see whether a full Vista install is possible -- though we remain optimistic.

- Boot Camp can load Linux. Or at least a Linux installer. Torifile at applenova.com also got cold feet, and aborted an Ubuntu install after confirming that the setup loaded and was able to recognize a keyboard and other hardware.

- International editions of Windows will work with Boot Camp. This should come as no surprise, but with a beta product that's designed to do something that isn't supposed to work, you never know. But the PC Watch team in Japan wasted no time and installed the Japanese version of XP Pro without a hitch.

- Boot Camp can load Windows XP Media Center Edition. Now the Mac mini really is a media PC!

- Third parties are already filling in some of the gaps. With a basic Boot Camp setup, you can't access your Mac OS X partition from your Windows XP partition. However, MediaFour's MacDrive software solves that problem. Now you can boot into Windows and read and write to your Mac partition, which could allow you to have common settings files for some cross-platform apps. Whether or not it will also allow you to share your iTunes library between partitions remains to be seen.

- You can boot from external drives, even though Boot Camp's installer won't allow you to set it up. Actually, that may not be true. However, you can create external boot disks using narf and blanka's boot manager (see, there's still a use for it!). And we're pretty confident that someone will find a way to do so within Boot Camp as well very quickly.

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