Developages - Development and Technology Blog

It’s the battle of the ultraslim 8MP cameraphones, with LG claiming a late victory.

Original post by Mike Slocombe

dcblogs writes “Thanks to Wall Street’s implosion, the chairman of Stanford University’s Computer Science Department says he is seeing more interest from students in computer science. Ditto at Boston College. Computer science enrollments crashed after the dot-com bust as students turned to hedge fund majors. And are computer science grads getting jobs? The professor at one university program that graduates about 45 students a year with CS degrees, wrote in a comment: ‘Last year 87% of our seniors were employed before graduation. The median starting salary was $58,500. A majority of CIS students had multiple job offers. From where I sit, there is a huge demand for entry level IT professionals in IS and in CS.’”

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Original post by timothy

An anonymous reader submits news of the million-laptop order from Venezuela of Intel’s version of the kid-friendly laptop. The computers are produced in Portugal. “The machines, rebranded ‘Magellan,’ will also come with Linux pre-installed as opposed to Windows XP. This order alone is 50% bigger than the entire OLPC project has managed to sell worldwide.”

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Original post by timothy

Darwinned writes “Intelligent Design is still a hot topic, as evidenced by recent legislation mandating that it be taught in school. Pro-ID group Discovery Institute has released an evolution textbook for use in schools, but a review shows it to be chock full of bad science and questionable reasoning. ‘The book doesn’t only promote stupidity, it demands it. In every way except its use of the actual term, this is a creationist book, but its authors are expecting that legislators and the courts will be too stupid to notice that, or to remember that the Supreme Court has declared teaching creationism an unconstitutional imposition of religion.’”

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Original post by ScuttleMonkey

Filed under: Gaming

This toaster may only have one setting, but that setting is NES, and that’s good enough for us. Created by the same console modder behind the monstrous Super Genintari, this project is certainly a good deal less ambitious than that endeavor, but it hits all the right marks nonetheless, including a functional front lever that acts as a power switch, and some red LEDs that light up your cart but probably won’t do much for your toast. Be sure to hit up the link below for plenty more pics and a look at the complete build process.

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Original post by Donald Melanson

Filed under: Gaming, Storage

We didn’t wake up today hoping to hate on Nintendo, but they’re making it a bit too easy. Granted, the Nintendo WiFi router could certainly find a place in the homes of the tech illiterate, but Nintendo keeps hiding behind the apron strings of its casual gamer fanbase, and we don’t have to sit around and take it. Two months after Nintendo finally admitted it had a problem with Wii storage and claimed to be “working on a solution,” Reggie’s still playing that line — to diminishing effects — in Club Nintendo, the official Nintendo mag of Latin America. He went on to say that “we have never said that it will be a hard drive nor have we mentioned how we will fix this issue, but we are going to deliver a better way to store the games.” Weak. Nintendo could easily create a backup solution for SD cards or the ubiquitous thumbstick, but instead the company is letting its most active users suffer with the mere 512MB of built-in storage, requiring them to re-download games from the Wii Shop, and making few promises about when or what the storage solution will be — not cool, Nintendo. Phew, good to get that off our chests. Now, if you’ll excuse us, we have some “High School Musical: Sing It!” to attend to.

[Via GameDaily]

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Original post by Paul Miller

Filed under: Gaming, Wireless, Networking

Nintendo just announced a 5,800 Yen (about $54 US) WiFi router, built to take that pesky wired Ethernet internet and blast it across your home in a palatable WiFi fashion for use by your Wii or DS. Just like every other router ever. Only this one is cheap, cute and built by Nintendo, so watch out Linksys / Netgear / everybody. The “Nintendo WiFI Network Adapter,” meant to supplement 2005′s WiFi USB Connector, looks to be Japan-only at the moment, and is due for a September 18th release.

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Original post by Paul Miller

Filed under: Gaming, Peripherals

Some dedicated hackers have finally managed to get the PSP and Microsoft’s Xbox 360 Chatpad typing. There are still a few kinks to smooth out, but the hard part seems over, with l0rdnic0 managing a tiny bit of soldiering using a PSP remote cable and some software from the Open Keyboard Project. It’s all still pretty nerdy at the moment, and we′re still miffed at that Logic 3 getting cancelled way back when, but we suppose this will have to do.

Continue reading PSP and 360 Chatpad are a match hacked in heaven

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Original post by Paul Miller

Filed under: Desktops

Okay, so maybe those all-in-one PCs have their positives, but seriously, who really looks forward to paying good money for something that’s so impossible to upgrade? Tim Schellekens sure doesn’t, and rather than biting the bullet, he chose to snap up one of VIA’s EPIA motherboards, an old school 15-inch LCD and a bit of fiberglass. The four pages waiting for you in the read link detail the transformation, and while we personally wouldn′t have gone to such extremes (buying two monitors to get one?) just to craft our own web surfing desktop, we definitely admire the dedication. Behold, i-EPIA.

[Thanks, Ewan]

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Laptops

Here you go modders and Eee PC lovers: Dell Mini 9 tear-down gore courtesy of the boys from Round Rock themselves. The Dell service manual has been posted on-line and reveals the Mini 9 as a modders paradise. So go ahead, impress us, we’d like some extra memory and disk space by the end of next week, k thanks.

[Via jkkmobile]

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Original post by Thomas Ricker

Filed under: Gaming, Peripherals

Remember that fad where everyone had dining room tables of their favorite Disney character? Or the age in the 70s where tables were shaped like lava lamps? No? At any rate, the modders over at SCAD Inc. have spent all summer crafting a fully-functional Super Nintendo controller-table, which reminds us an awful lot of the fully-functional NES controller-table we saw in May of this year. So, which geek is gonna take on the N64 controller table? Or better yet, the Virtual Boy?

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Desktops

There was no shortage of case mods at NVIDIA’s NVISION conference, but this one in particular managed to snag the majority of the spotlight. Created by Richard “DarthBeavis” Surroz, the Blade-themed DayWalker actually houses three separate computer systems; two are for playing games, while the other acts as a server. Conceptually, at least, the rig is designed to enable two users to play against one another, and given the “50+ fans” and triple SLI GTX 280 GPU setups (among other things), it’s no shock to hear that it’d cost around $18,000 to $20,000 to build again. ‘Course, that’s chump change when you’re stuffing away millions of dollars owed to the government — just ask Snipes… oh, wait.

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Handhelds

Sony’s VAIO UX UMPC is definitely one of the sexier handheld PCs out there, but it’s never been accused of being a rocket — even the latest models only offer a lonely single-core 1.2GHz Core 2 Solo for your $2500, and since the chip is soldered onto the board, swapping it out for a Core 2 Duo exactly easy, requiring an infrared soldering station and plenty of experience swapping chips. Nevertheless, it can be done, and Anh Nguyen from the Micro PC Talk forums pulled it off, upgrading his unit to a 1.2GHz U7600 Core 2 Duo with no ill effects or excess heat — just some better benchmarks and hardocre modder bragging rights. Check out beckmarks after the break, and hit the read link for more.

[Thanks, Logan]

Continue reading VAIO UX gets hot-rodded with Core 2 Duo mod

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Original post by Nilay Patel

Filed under: Displays, Handhelds

Oh sure, we’ve seen a limited number of hacks surface for the hotly selling (but still unsightly) Amazon Kindle, but we’ve yet to see a hardware mod of this magnitude. We’ve always heard that desperate times call for desperate measures, and evidently said mantra is very true. After having the display in his Kindle smashed around 8 months ago (thanks, kid sister…), blakebevin set out to perform an unprecedented surgery. With an unwanted Sony Reader LCD in hand and a badly broken Kindle on the operating table, he attempted to give the latter unit new life with a few pixels from a cross-town rival. We’ll warn you — this one’s not for the rookies in attendance, and even Mr. Bevin (it is Mr. Bevin, right?) had some “nagging button issues” once the thing was sewn back up. Give the read link a look if you ever find yourself in this admittedly peculiar situation.

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Digital Cameras, Misc. Gadgets

Oh sure, you′ve been able to buy digital camera-equipped binoculars for years now, but finding one that does video (particularly with the camcorder you already own) has been a continual struggle. Thanks to one engineering soul, you can forge ahead with your plans to video all sorts of sights by adding a CCD eyepiece to any ‘ole set of binoculars. Once installed, you simply hook up your camcorder (hope it has video in), mash record and get to gazing. Be careful what you look for, though.

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Original post by Darren Murph