Asus increases Eee Pad Transformer production

When the Asus Eee Pad Transformer arrived in the US late last month, it was quickly sold out. Rumors suggested that the device was low in volumes due to component shortages or even because of quality control issues but Asus declared that finding a unit was hard due to demand, not supply. Either way, the company has confirmed it is steadily increasing the number of units shipped so that you can actually find a device to buy.

"We are ramping production every week to address the supply concerns, including almost daily air shipments into North America," an Asus spokesperson told Engadget. "We expect the supply line to improve significantly over the coming weeks."

In related news, Asus has confirmed that the Transformer will be getting Android 3.1 (codenamed Honeycomb) in June. The update will be sent over-the-air early next month.

The Eee Pad Transformer sets itself apart from the tablet competition with an optional chiclet-style keyboard dock that essentially transforms the device into a netbook. Besides making the device much more convenient to type on and handle productivity tasks, it also extends battery life from around 9.5 hours to 16 hours thanks to a second battery within. The actual device costs $400 for the 16GB Wi-Fi only model, although the dock will set you back an extra $150. Still, the price is very competitive given that this is one of the few tablets available with Android 3.0 (codenamed Honeycomb).

The Transformer has a 10.1-inch 1280×800 IPS Gorilla Glass capacitive touchscreen display, a 1GHz Nvidia Tegra 2 dual-core processor, 1GB of RAM, 5MP rear and 1.2MP front cameras, a Micro SD expansion slot, and HDMI out. You'll also find speakers and audio jacks, USB 2.0, 802.11b/g/n and Bluetooth 2.1 connectivity, as well as a G-sensor, light sensor, gyroscope, e-compass, and GPS. It also comes with Asus' Waveshare interface, which includes MyNet (streams media to networked devices), MyLibrary (digital bookstore) and MyCloud (cloud storage and remote access tool).

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Source: http://www.techspot.com/news/43855-asus-increases-eee-pad-transformer-production.html

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A Worldwide Nuclear Slowdown Continues

The bad news from Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant continues to reverberate around the world, dimming nuclear energy's future and boosting the fortunes of low-carbon power sources. Last week's decision by Japan's prime minister to scrap plans for 14 new reactors is just the latest sign of a global nuclear slowdown, and the technology faces renewed scrutiny even in countries with pronuclear governments, including the U.S., China, and France.

"Due to both the time needed for integrating the lessons learned from Fukushima in new reactor designs and the likely hesitations of the public and decision makers, the deployment of nuclear power will be delayed," says Jan Horst Keppler, principal economist at the Nuclear Energy Agency, a Paris-based arm of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

What has not changed, says Keppler, are the drivers that were fueling new reactor construction: concerns over energy security and climate change. In the past, nuclear technology has been perceived as the cheapest option. But with nuclear on hold, governments are looking to accelerate renewable-energy development, and the latest cost estimates from the U.S. Energy Information Agency provide support for that position.

The agency's Annual Energy Outlook, released this month, estimates that new reactors starting up in 2016 will produce power at a cost of $114 per megawatt-hour. Onshore wind turbines, geothermal, and biomass power plants all beat that price, according to the agency's figures (as do gas-fired power plants that capture and sequester their carbon emissions underground).

The potential for renewable energy technologies to scale, meanwhile, was affirmed this month by the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which issued a special report predicting that renewable sources could satisfy up to 80 percent of global energy needs by 2050.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon also highlighted nuclear energy's comparatively troubled position last week with his call for a high-level debate on nuclear energy's costs, risks, and benefits. "Twenty-five years after Chernobyl and in the aftermath of Fukushima, I believe it is high time to take a hard look at ... strengthening nuclear safety and security," he told reporters at a press conference in Geneva last Wednesday. The discussion by world leaders is scheduled for September's General Assembly meeting in New York.

Japan is taking the hardest look at nuclear, as Tokyo Electric Power?Fukushima Daiichi's operator?continues to wrestle with dangerous radiation levels in its bid to cool the reactors and spent fuel pools at its stricken plant. Last week it was revealed that nuclear fuel in one reactor had melted and sunk to the reactor's bottom, and that Tokyo Electric Power had withheld radioactivity readings in the first days of the crisis, keeping the government and public in the dark and putting plant workers at risk.

Japan's prime minister, Naoto Kan, is looking to renewable power and energy efficiency to replace some nuclear energy. But in the short term, he faces a power-supply crisis that got worse last week when two reactors at the coastal Hamaoka nuclear plant, southwest of Tokyo, were shut down at Kan's request pending tsunami-protective upgrades.

Chubu Electric Power, the utility that owns Hamaoka, may struggle to meet peak demand this summer without the reactors, which generate over 3,600 megawatts of power. Tokyo Electric is counting on 1,000 megawatts from Chubu to meet its own summer peak, and even with that help, it is facing at least a 5,000-megawatt supply shortage this summer, according to the Institute of Energy Economics, Japan.

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Intel to unveil more than 10 Oak Trail tablets at Computex

Intel is bringing out the guns at the upcoming Computex trade show, to be held from May 31 to June 4 in Taipei, with more than 10 new tablets powered by Meego and Android operating systems. The tablets will be based on Intel's Oak Trail processors and several major vendors are expected to embrace the new platform, the Wall Street Journal reports.

While its unclear exactly which manufacturers are going to launch tablet devices running on Intel chips, the company is expected to use its ties with the likes of Asus, Lenovo, and others to help it establish in the tablet market.

Intel has had a hard time cracking into the tablet market so far -- or smartphones for that matter -- but they are responding to the challenge with new low-power Atom microprocessors aimed specifically at this market. They are also hard at work porting Google's tablet-specific Android 3.0, aka Honeycomb, to the x86 architecture, and will reportedly pay a $10 subsidy for each Intel-based tablet shipped in order to attract first-tier notebook vendors.

Going forward the company says it expects to ship more than 35 of Intel's chip-based tablet models through the year -- an unlikely goal considering we're almost halfway through. Intel is also working on a follow up Cedar Trail platform for tablets and its Medfield chip designed for smartphones, though we probably won't see those in the market until 2012.

With ARM currently holding an overwhelming majority of the tablet and smartphone market through licensing agreements, convincing hardware manufacturers to embrace the still-unproven Atom won't be easy. Their debut model, the 1.5 GHz single-core Atom Z670, is said to deliver improved video playback, fast Internet browsing, and longer battery life, without sacrificing performance -- but it's also rumored to cost OEMs three times as much as Tegra 2.

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Source: http://www.techspot.com/news/43852-intel-to-unveil-more-than-10-oak-trail-tablets-at-computex.html

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Geothermal without the Earthquakes

A startup in Connecticut says it has a way to improve the reach of enhanced geothermal energy, without the financial or geological risks associated with such projects.

Enhanced geothermal systems (EGS) represents a promising source of clean power generation in geographies that lack the ideal combination of underground heat, water, and rock permeability needed for conventional geothermal. But with EGS, developers typically have to engineer the conditions they require, and this involves fracturing solid rock by pumping fluids into wells at high pressure, an approach that has raised concerns about the potential to trigger earthquakes and contaminate aquifers.

The problem, called "induced seismicity," led to the cancellation in 2009 of a project in Basel, Switzerland, after the high-pressure fracturing of rock around the well caused hundreds of seismic events, some large enough to damage property. In North America, EGS developer AltaRock Energy has been caught up in a similar controversy.

"You can get seismic events with any kind of fracturing," said Herbert Einstein, a professor of rock mechanics in MIT's department of civil and environmental engineering. "If you do it close to a city, it's an issue."

GTherm, founded in 2008, says it has come up with an approach that doesn't require any fracturing or water cooling. It uses a kind of solid-state heat exchanger?what the company calls a "heat nest"? at the bottom of wells. The nest draws heat away from the surrounding rock more efficiently, with the help of a highly conductive grout that encases the heat exchanger.

To generate power, fluid travels the length of the well in a closed loop and carries the heat from the nest back to the surface, where a secondary fluid within a separate closed loop is turned into gas to drive an electricity-generating turbine. To further enhance heat recovery and increase power output, thin bore holes about 100 feet long and lined with heat-conducting material can be drilled off the main vertical well. "We're basically a heat pump on steroids," says Michael Parrella, CEO and founder of GTherm.

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Gaming 26 - The Showman's Bag

Gaming 26 - The Showman's Bag

Posted on 13th May 2011 at 12:17 by Podcast with 16 comments

This week Paul and Joe were joined by plughead.net founder and former PC Zone writer David Brown. First up on the agenda was the continuing PSN outage, and how the continuing lack of service is starting to affect games developers.

We also attempted to talk about the Witcher 2, but somehow we ended up on the topic of DLC and, unsurprisingly, Mass Effect 2. Joe also got a chance to talk about his experiences with Star Wars: The Old Republic, and why he thought the game deserved the savaging that he gave it.

Finally, we also got a chance to put a few of your questions to David who discussed everything from the future of print publishing to the pressure that games publishers and developers put on members of the games press.


As always, we've also set up our weekly competition too, the lucky winner of which will walk away with a Roccat Vire Gaming Headset. The headset weighs only 15g and comes complete with a carry bag and rubberised ergonomic earplugs.

As ever, the bit-tech hardware podcast features music by Brad Sucks, and was recorded on Shure microphones. You can download the podcast direct, listen in-browser or subscribe through iTunes using the links below. Also, be sure to let us know your thoughts about the discussion in the forums.

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Senate Refuses to End Tax Breaks for Big Oil

Despite falling eight votes short of the 60 needed to move ahead with the bill, top Democrats said they would insist that eliminating the tax breaks to generate billions of dollars in revenue must be part of any future agreement to raise the federal debt limit.

?We have to stand up and say, ?Enough is enough,? ? said Senator Al Franken, Democrat of Minnesota. ?While oil prices are gouging the pocketbooks of American families, these companies are on a pace for a record profit this year.?

The defeat on Tuesday was expected since most Republicans were dug in against what they saw as a politically motivated plan in advance of the 2012 elections. Democrats had hoped that directing the savings toward the deficit would make it harder for Republicans to reject it.

In the 52-to-48 vote, 3 Democrats joined 45 Republicans in opposing the bill, which was supported by the Obama administration and fiscal watchdog groups that saw the tax help for the oil industry as wasteful. Forty-eight Democrats, two independents and two Republicans backed it.

Energy-state Democrats criticized the initiative, saying it was misdirected and would do nothing to ease gasoline prices and could cost American jobs.

?Why are we harming an industry ? five large oil and gas companies that work internationally, that employ 9.2 million people in the United States directly?? asked Senator Mary L. Landrieu, Democrat of Louisiana. ?Why are we doing it??

Republicans, who on Wednesday will push their own plan to open more areas to oil drilling and speed government permits, said the Democratic proposal would contribute to higher prices and increase dependence on foreign oil even though a recent Congressional Research Service report predicted any impact on prices would be negligible.

?Clearly, this is not a serious effort to address the price of gas at the pump,? said Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader.

Under the proposal, Democrats would have eliminated five different tax breaks enjoyed by the multinational oil companies, producing an estimated $21 billion over 10 years.

More than $12 billion would have come from eliminating a domestic manufacturing tax deduction for the big oil companies, and $6 billion would have been generated by ending their deductions for taxes paid to foreign governments. Critics suggest that the companies have been able to disguise what should be foreign royalty payments as taxes to reduce their tax liability. The bill would also deny the companies the ability to deduct some intangible drilling and development costs.

The bill would have applied to BP, Exxon Mobil, Shell, Chevron and ConocoPhillips.

The White House lent strong support to the effort though the president in the past has recommended applying revenue generated by ending the tax breaks to the development of alternative energy sources.

?The administration believes that, at a time when it is working with the Congress on proposals to reduce federal deficits, the nation cannot afford to maintain these wasteful subsidies,? the White House said. 

Senator Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat and majority leader, portrayed the vote as one that revealed the values of Republicans.

?Instead of defending oil companies, Republicans should be defending the American taxpayer,? Mr. Reid said. ?We believe this is the kind of wasteful spending that will lead to an agreement on reducing the debt.?

While most Republicans have opposed eliminating the tax breaks as a back-door tax increase, some, including Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio and Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, the Budget Committee chairman, have indicated a willingness to consider the idea.

Also on Tuesday, Senate Democrats wrote to the Federal Trade Commission seeking an inquiry into whether domestic oil refiners had reduced production to drive down the gasoline supply and drive up prices. ?This is just another piece of the puzzle that we need to get at as we try to take away taxpayer subsidies to Big Oil and hold Big Oil accountable for whatever may be going on in the supply chain that is hurting the families that I work for,? said Senator Claire McCaskill, Democrat of Missouri.

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Schwarzenegger Whispers Become an Admission

Mr. Schwarzenegger?s advisers had heard it. So had top aides to Mr. Davis, whom Mr. Schwarzenegger would go on to unseat. But in the closing days of what was a circus of a campaign, the rumors got pushed aside as Mr. Schwarzenegger dealt with a barrage of seemingly more credible allegations that he had groped and molested women during his years as a movie star, charges that Ms. Shriver battled back forcefully, contributing in large part to his victory.

In fact, Mr. Schwarzenegger acknowledged on Tuesday, he had fathered a child with a member of his household staff a few years before running for office, a secret that he said he hid from his wife and that aides said he kept from them. Through much of her pregnancy and for the eight years that Mr. Schwarzenegger served as one of the highest-profile governors in the nation, the woman continued to work in the couple?s home. Some of their friends, looking back, said they now believe the child was an occasional presence in the house in the gated community at the end of Mandeville Canyon Road.

That deception by Mr. Schwarzenegger ended Monday night when the governor, responding to an inquiry from The Los Angeles Times, released a statement acknowledging his child. Ms. Shriver ? his wife of 25 years, a former television news correspondent and a member of the Kennedy family ? issued her own statement Tuesday reflecting what her friends described as the devastating and utterly shocking collapse of a marriage that had captured national attention. Ms. Shriver had moved out of the house and into a Beverly Hills hotel earlier this year.

?As a mother, my concern is for the children,? she said. ?I ask for compassion, respect and privacy as my children and I try to rebuild our lives and heal. I will have no further comment.?

The family scandal unfolded in real time on social networks. One of their sons, Patrick, 17, posted his distress on his Twitter account, though he presented his name as Patrick Shriver, rather than Patrick Schwarzenegger. ?Some days you feel? terrible, he wrote, borrowing lyrics from a Fort Minor song, including a profanity to convey that feeling. He added, ?Some days you want to quit and just be normal for a bit, yet I love my family till death do us apart.?

His sister Katherine, who is 21, wrote: ?This is definitely not easy but I appreciate your love and support as I begin to heal and move forward.?

The disclosure set off a clamor in a city that has always been intrigued by the celebrity wattage produced by this marriage of show business and politics. Reporters and camera crews crowded around the looming stone gates near the couple?s home, craning for a glimpse of the former governor. Mr. Schwarzenegger and Ms. Shriver found themselves back in the sights of two Web sites that have feasted on their marriage before: TMZ and Gawker.

?The Schwarzenegger love child scandal has arrived,? Gawker announced.

Associates of Mr. Schwarzenegger and Ms. Shriver, pointing to the request for privacy, offered only scant details. The child was said to be a boy, about 14 years old. Several friends said the mother was working around the house, pregnant, at the same time that Ms. Shriver was pregnant with the youngest of the couple?s four children, Christopher, who is 13. The woman and the child did not live in the house.

By every account, Mr. Schwarzenegger made no mention of the situation to Ms. Shriver or to the team of political consultants he brought in during the 2003 recall election against Mr. Davis, and in the re-election campaign in 2006.

Friends of both Mr. Schwarzenegger and Ms. Shriver expressed astonishment not only at his actions, but also that he had eluded detection by the public and his family over the course of his very public life. Mr. Schwarzenegger told his wife about the affair only late last year, at the end of his public service career, and shortly after the mother of his son left the job with severance after working for the family for 20 years.

Adam Nagourney reported from Los Angeles, and Jennifer Steinhauer from Washington. Reporting was contributed by Michael Cieply, Jennifer Medina, Ian Lovett and Ana Facio Contreras from Los Angeles.

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Envato Elite incentive program launched for marketplaces

Envato today launched its Envato Elite program, an incentive program that rewards the best performers on the Envato Marketplaces as they scale the ranks through the platform?s game-like leveling progression.

Marketplace users who sell items through vertical-oriented meta-sites (such as ThemeForest, the most lucrative) built on the one platform earn ?paws? for each earnings bracket they move through, gaining access to a higher level of revenue share with each level.

Envato Elite adds to that experience, with rewards that range from celebratory ? such as a Superbowl-like ring and, at the very top of the ladder, a first class flight out to Envato HQ in Melbourne ? to the practical, such as paid-for advertising campaigns and access to a price adjuster that allows users to increase the cost of their files by up to 30%.

Elite levels begin at $75,000 sold, and the ?max level? in MMO parlance is $10,000,000 ? that?s when authors get flown to Australia.

CEO Collis Ta?eed says the Envato Elite program has been in development conceptually for a long time, and the price adjuster is a new component of that for serious authors in response to recent questions over Envato?s accessible pricing policy.

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Source: http://thenextweb.com/dd/2011/05/18/envato-elite-incentive-program-launched-for-marketplaces/

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A Virtual View beneath the Skin

Microsoft researchers have developed a handheld device that gives physical-therapy patients a virtual view beneath the skin to see what an injury looks like inside. The hope is that this will make them a little more eager to keep doing their therapies. 

"People are notoriously bad at sticking to their physical therapy regimens," says Amy Karlson, of Microsoft Research's Computational User Experiences Group in Redmond, Washington. Between 30 and 50 percent of patients with chronic conditions fail to comply with their recommended therapies, she says. As a result, conditions can take longer to heal or can get even worse.

Karlson says the more information that patients have about their injuries, the more likely they are to comply with physical therapy regimens. The new tool, called AnatOnMe, aims to give patients that extra bit of information. The device projects an image of the underlying bone structure, muscle tissue, tendons, or nerves onto the skin, giving patients a better understanding of the injury, and of what they need to do to help the healing process, says Karlson.

The prototype device comes in two parts. The first contains a handheld, or pico, projector, an ordinary digital camera, and an infrared camera. The second contains a laser pointer and the control buttons. "The technology is somewhat low-tech," says Karlson, who presented the device this week in Vancouver at CHI 2011, the Association for Computing Machinery's Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.

Instead of using a complicated autocorrection system to map the image of the internal injury precisely onto the patient's exterior, the therapist simply points the projector and lines it up by eye. And with the prototype, the images displayed are not actually taken from scans of the patients but come from stock graphical images used to show one of six different types of injury.

Even so, it appears to be very effective, says Karlson. Controlled experiments of the device carried out by two physical therapists suggest that the device encourages patients to stick to their therapies.

A doctor or therapist could also use AnatOnMe to project images onto a nearby wall. The user interface also works this way, says Karlson, with the menu options projected onto a surface. Options are selected using the laser pointer, which is detected by the infrared camera.

E. Anne Reicherter, a member of the American Physical Therapy Association at the University of Maryland-Baltimore School of Medicine, says physical therapy compliance is a major problem, partly because it usually involves exercise, and partly because it involves changing a habit or forgoing a behavior that may have caused the injury in the first place.

"But most patients are very interested in understanding what's going on in their body, so something like this that can visually assist them in truly understanding would be a real benefit," says Reicherter. Although, she adds, a certain portion of the population, particularly older patients, may find such visceral detail a bit of a turn off.

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Envato Elite incentive program launched for marketplaces

Envato today launched its Envato Elite program, an incentive program that rewards the best performers on the Envato Marketplaces as they scale the ranks through the platform?s game-like leveling progression.

Marketplace users who sell items through vertical-oriented meta-sites (such as ThemeForest, the most lucrative) built on the one platform earn ?paws? for each earnings bracket they move through, gaining access to a higher level of revenue share with each level.

Envato Elite adds to that experience, with rewards that range from celebratory ? such as a Superbowl-like ring and, at the very top of the ladder, a first class flight out to Envato HQ in Melbourne ? to the practical, such as paid-for advertising campaigns and access to a price adjuster that allows users to increase the cost of their files by up to 30%.

Elite levels begin at $75,000 sold, and the ?max level? in MMO parlance is $10,000,000 ? that?s when authors get flown to Australia.

CEO Collis Ta?eed says the Envato Elite program has been in development conceptually for a long time, and the price adjuster is a new component of that for serious authors in response to recent questions over Envato?s accessible pricing policy.

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Source: http://thenextweb.com/dd/2011/05/18/envato-elite-incentive-program-launched-for-marketplaces/

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