by Nilay Patel, posted Nov 29th 2008 at 10:14AMIntel’s never made a secret of the fact that it developed the now-ubiquitous Atom chipset primarily for mobile devices and low-powered netbooks for at emerging markets, so it’s not totally surprising to hear Intel sales VP Stu Pann say the company doesn’t see netbooks as potentially cannibalizing sales of its existing processors — but we are a bit intrigued by his seeming dismissal of netbooks as everyday machines. According to Stu, a netbook with a 10-inch screen is “fine for an hour. (Read the full post about ‘Intel VP says netbooks are “fine for an hour”’…)

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by Nilay Patel, posted Nov 29th 2008 at 10:14AMIntel’s never made a secret of the fact that it developed the now-ubiquitous Atom chipset primarily for mobile devices and low-powered netbooks for at emerging markets, so it’s not totally surprising to hear Intel sales VP Stu Pann say the company doesn’t see netbooks as potentially cannibalizing sales of its existing processors — but we are a bit intrigued by his seeming dismissal of netbooks as everyday machines. According to Stu, a netbook with a 10-inch screen is “fine for an hour. (Read the full post about ‘Intel VP says netbooks are “fine for an hour”’…)

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by Darren Murph, posted Nov 29th 2008 at 5:26PM We’re pretty sharp on the fairy dust market, and while it no doubt goes for a premium in certain parts of the world, there’s still a serious surcharge being added in here for transparency. Japan’s own Hario is catering yet again to the affluent among us with its Harion speaker set, which boasts a subwoofer, two mid-range drivers and a pair of acrylic tweeters — all encased in heat-resistant glass. Of course, the company is no stranger to pumping out exclusive glass-based kit and charging a wad for it, as this particular package will run customers a staggering 16 million yen, or just north of $168,000. (Read the full post about ‘$168,000 Harion speaker set crafted from heat-resistant glass, fairy dust’…)

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by Darren Murph, posted Nov 29th 2008 at 8:33PM We know, the last thing you want to hear of right now is more food, but we just couldn’t resist. Anna Gram’s artsy Citrus Clock combines the magic of stellar design with basic science in order to create a timepiece that’s powered by lemons (or the citrus fruit of your choosing, presumably). (Read the full post about ‘Artsy Citrus Clock turns lemons into time of day’…)

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The editor of Tweaktown just sent me an interesting link to a test that they performed so seek out what happens to gaming performance when using less cores on a new Intel Core i7 CPU. While I can’t vouch for their methodology, I found their findings interesting: The difference between 1-core and 4-cores (with hyperthreading*) is often small or non-existent. When there is a small jump, it happens between switching from 1-core to 2-core. Using 3 and 4 cores doesn’t usually result a perceived performance jump in the games they tested. The games: World in Conflict, Crysis, FarCry 2, Left4Dead. Head to Teaktown to see the details, but the idea is that unlike video-encoding and other tasks, today’s games aren’t really good at taking advantage of a multi-core setup. (Read the full post about ‘The Impact of Having Less Cores in Real World Games: Minimal’…)

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It’s not uncommon to see a shiny mouse, decked out with some overly feminine design.  However, there is rarely a mouse seen that uses decals that are just cool as opposed to pretty.  Well this pirate mouse will help you on your way to any devious planning.  The seemingly evil mouse would also be a great tool to pwn noobs and leave angry comments on YouTube or your blog of choice. Sadly, this mouse doesn’t look quite as menacing as one would hope for with a skulls and crossbones mouse.  Between the teeth and the cartoonish eyes, it doesn’t look like it’d strike the fear into anyone.  Actually, your Great Grandmother might even call it cute, which is never a good sign.  Luckily though this mouse does have one perk, it is actually optical.  The mouse is also compatible with not only Windows, but Mac OS X and Linux as well. (Read the full post about ‘The Pirate Computer Mouse’…)

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by Jacob Schulman, posted Nov 29th 2008 at 12:09PM Admit it. You’ve got an old GameCube from yesteryear laying around, and the slow economy (and fear for your life) is holding you back from running to your nearest brick-and-mortar to pick up a Classic Controller for your Wii. You know you want to play Super Mario 64 to work off that turkey, but you can’t justify laying out the cash. Fret not; YouTube user marcan42 has you covered, courtesy of a PIC18F4520 microcontroller and makeshift GameCube connector, along with a chopped off Nunchuk extension cord. Of course, you could just pick up a different model, but that would be way too easy. (Read the full post about ‘Man hacks GameCube controller for the Wii with tremendous effort’…)

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by Darren Murph, posted Nov 29th 2008 at 3:40PMSure, you can go out and get yourself a laptop right now that’ll go 12.5-hours strong, but what if your portable computer could nearly outlast your Aigo A215? While L’s mythical quad core lappie came close in theory, Mary Lou Jepsen’s (the former CTO at OLPC) startup is hoping to eventually create a machine that can last between 20 and 40-hours between charges. Pixel Qi is being pretty closelipped right now (and understandably so) about what exactly it has going on, but we get the idea the secret sauce is in a highly efficient display that will require far less power than traditional LCDs. The best part? We could see one of these longevous notebooks in the pipeline as early as 2 (Read the full post about ‘Pixel Qi conjuring up black magic technology for 40-hour laptops’…)

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by Donald Melanson, posted Nov 28th 2008 at 9:34PM We caught sight of Psyclone’s WildCharger-based TouchCharge kit for the Xbox 360 a few weeks ago but, in case you missed it, the company is also offering similar kits for the playstation 3 and Wii. At $49.99 the PS3 version is actually the cheapest of the lot, due to the fact that it’s able to use the controller’s own rechargeable battery, while the $59.99 Wii version and $69.99 Xbox 360 version each include some rechargeable batteries of their own courtesy of Psyclone. (Read the full post about ‘PS3, Wii users get Psyclone TouchCharge pads, too’…)

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by Darren Murph, posted Nov 29th 2008 at 1:55AMIt’s not often that you find a webcam that’s multifaceted, but Earth Trek’s webcam is just that. Dubbed the “hottest webcam” this world has ever seen (um, no), this unit packs a 1.3-megapixel camera, VGA capture abilities, auto focus / auto brightness and the real kicker, a 2-port USB hub. (Read the full post about ‘Earth Trek offers up VGA webcam with 2-port USB hub’…)

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