Personal Computing

Last week we posted an audience video of the a 'sneak peek' presentation from the Adobe Max developer conference that showed a remarkable de-blurring Photoshop plug-in in development. Adobe has now posted their official high quality video of the presentation segment, and the effect is easy to see. Adobe's presentation staging is pretty awesome too. Video after the break. Read More

Adobe showed what it calls a "sneak peek" of some technology at last week's MAX conference, that may or may not make its way into a future version of Photoshop (we're pretty sure it will). It's a method for de-blurring photographs by analyzing them and constructing the motion path that the camera lens followed to create the original blur. Using some highly advanced magic, the resulting blur can then be removed to an impressive degree – blurred text, for instance, becomes readable. The algorithm seems to work on low resolution phone pics just as well. Now, when they say "enhance that section right there" in just about every modern police procedural TV show, it might actually mean something. Video after the break. Read More

Last year, a unique new educational device was tested with a group of school children. The device was the I-slate, an ultra-low-cost tablet computer that is being developed by the Institute for Sustainable and Applied Infodynamics (ISAID), a joint venture of Houston's Rice University and Singapore's Nanyang Technological University. The 10 to 13 year-old children were students at a rural school near Hyderabad, India. The tablet is designed for use in such impoverished schools, as each unit is expected to sell for less than US$50, and future models will run on solar power. Now that the field tests are complete and the results have been analyzed, the I-slate is set to go into full production. Read More

Those not content with a getting a 2D top-down or 360-degree street level view of a planned route using Google Maps can now enjoy a virtual flight over the route thanks to Google adding a new Helicopter View. The new feature, which currently only works in a full browser and requires the Google Earth plugin, lets users see 3D view, should come in particularly handy for walkers or bike riders looking for a more intuitive view of potentially tiring hills. Read More

Researchers at Purdue University are developing a new type of computer memory that they claim could be faster than SRAM and use 99 percent less energy than flash memory. Called FeTRAM, for ferroelectric transistor random access memory, the new technology fulfills the three basic functions of computer memory; writing, reading and storing information for a long time. It is also a nonvolatile form of memory, meaning that it retains its data after the computer has been turned off. Its creators claim it has the potential to replace conventional memory systems. Read More

Most people like to put their personal stamp on their PC with their own desktop wallpaper and settings that have been tweaked just the way they like them. But all that is lost when they log onto a shared PC on which they don’t have an account set up. All that changes with Windows 8, which allows users to enjoy their own profile, settings and Metro style apps on any Windows 8 PC by logging in with their Windows Live ID. Read More

LaCie has finally joined the Thunderbolt club with the release of its Little Big Disk Thunderbolt Series. Announced earlier this year, the Little Big Disk Thunderbolt is available in 1 TB (7200RPM) and 2 TB (5400 RPM) HDD configurations at a price of US$399 and $499 respectively. There's also a 240 GB SSD model on the way but pricing is yet to be confirmed. Read More

Known for PC hardware such as high-speed DRAM modules, power supplies, solid state drives or USB flash drives, California-based Corsair recently announced a new range of peripherals aimed at PC gamers. The Vengeance lineup consists of two mice and two keyboards aimed at different gaming genres and a trio of noise-cancelling headsets. Read More

The flow of Thunderbolt peripherals onto the market definitely seems to be building steam with this latest example from Sonnet bringing expanded connectivity options to those with machines packing Apple's new I/O technology. Sonnet's US$150 EchoExpressCard/34 Thunderbolt Adapter uses a PCIe interface to link a range of existing peripherals such as USB 3.0, FireWire 800, eSATA, Gigabit Ethernet and high speed memory cards through a single Thunderbolt port. Read More