Articles, Tutorials and Reviews

This is a user-contributed article.
TV has evolved in the last 5 years and can be difficult to understand. There are many technologies out there in the marketplace that are worth being conscious of as you go and buy an HDTV. Today’s HDTV’s also come with a variety of resolutions. You may see 720p, 1080p, 1080i etc. We are going through a changing of the guard, and it’s all gotten rather complicated when you want to purchase a replacement set!
The first generation of HDTV’s had maximum resolution or lines of 1080i/720p but today’s TVs have a maximum resolution of 1080p. When buying a TV you’ll find these 1080p sets to be more expensive than those that have a maximum resolution of 1080i/720p. This is because these ‘true’ HD TV sets are not only newer but they can accommodate optimal resolution on blu-ray and HD-DVD players without having to scale the image. The i/p behind the number indicates whether the resolution is interlaced (an older method of scaling images that results in the image having to be put back together and the signal to degrade) or progressive scan (a newer, superior method that results in no signal degradation).

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Can you learn how to relax, achieve a meditative state and control your own brain waves with a computer game? That was the premise of the biofeedback-based series of games from the Wild Divine Project, and when the company gave me a copy of their flagship title The Journey to Wild Divine: The Passage, I was eager to check it out.
And y’know what? It’s extraordinarily cool. It’s unlike any computer game you’ve ever played and even though I am not a fan of children playing computer games, I was happy to watch my children learn how to explore the lush interactive world of Wild Divine and overcome the various challenges and obstacles that are the heart of the game.

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Buying a television has never been more complicated than today, with four primary television technologies — plasma, projection, LCD or CRT — and a variety of different scan rates and resolutions, including HD, which has different meanings for different vendors.
More televised and DVD content is becoming available in High Definition (HD), digital broadcasting is becoming a requirement for terrestrial broadcasters, and more TVs are coming on the market to take advantage of these technologies. The result? It’s getting more difficult to stick with your old CRT TV, but hard to know which new technology will work best.

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In which we get the hottest video game system from Christmas 2006 and turn it into a Linux box? You bet!
If you’re still thinking about video game systems as being just a wee bit more technologically advanced than an old Coleco or Atari 800, you’ve got quite a surprise coming the first time you crack open the proverbial hood. While the new Nintendo Wii (pronounced “wee”, oddly enough) has some slick hardware, as does the Microsoft Xbox 360 device, the real winner in the technology race is the rather amazing Sony Playstation 3 system.
Built around an IBM Cell Broadband Engine processor, the PS3 includes a high def Blu-ray drive, four USB 2.0 ports, an Nvidia graphics processor with 256MB of separate video RAM, support for Compact Flash, SD and Memory Stick devices, Ethernet, built-in 802.11b and g, Bluetooth, an HDMI port and support for all the video resolutions you can imagine, including 480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i and the holy grail, 1080p. Sounds like a computer, not a video game system, doesn’t it?

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[This is a reader-contributed article]
For the longest time my wife has wanted a hands free system in her car so that she did not have to use a headset or handle the phone while driving. Her description always included a cradle setup, but she did not know where to put the cradle in the car (a 2002 Audi A6).
For her birthday this year I finally took the initiative and did some research. I found that there are some very good bluetooth solutions out there. My wife’s Treo 700p is — mostly — bluetooth capable, but more on that later.
For various reasons, including good reviews, reputation (Motorola seems to know a thing or two about voice communications), features and price I went with the Motorola IHF1000 Car Kit.
There really didn’t seem to be much to the kit when it came in the mail, though: an interface (they call it a UIM for “User Interface Module”), a control module (a rectangular black box), a 5W speaker, a microphone and a wiring harness. I thought the speaker was redundant since I had planned to use the car’s audio system for receiving calls, but that plan changed as installation progressed…

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Technology has changed dramatically in the last decade, but perhaps nowhere more than with cellular phone technology. From being a device for dialing numbers cellphones have evolved to where they’re a portable entertainment and media device, with music players, Web access, and even the ability to play videos and television content.
Some companies are pushing this set of capabilities further, and I was intriguied when Cellfire sent me a Sony-Ericsson phone with its coupon system pre-installed. I tested it out and was surprised by what I found…

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