TJantunen.com

(AP) — Cisco Systems Inc. announced Tuesday that it is upgrading one of its biggest pieces of networking hardware, a router that’s used to power the most trafficked parts of the Internet backbone.
from PHYSorg.com: Hardware News

Sometime later this year, HP will release its Slate tablet PC device. What we know now is that it will run Windows 7 as well as Adobe Flash and Air, according to information revealed by an HP executive. However, it appears that the company is attempting to be quite selective about how and when it doles out further details on the device. The Slate’s ability to work with two significant Adobe technologies widely used on desktops and laptops is demonstrated in a new video posted by Phil McKinney, HP’s chief technology officer, on his blog.
from TechNewsWorld

LinkXL is the first technology of its kind to allow all parties to buy and sell text link advertising within existing website content using a fully automated system, establishing a more mainstream, targeted, and cost-effective method of text link advertising. With the introduction of LinkXL, advertisers can buy links to organically grow the link popularity of their website while publishers can make their keywords available to a much wider cross-section than ever before. For more information, visit LinkXL.

LinkXL is one of the newest solutions for webmasters and bloggers to monetize the content on their blog or website by selling automatically placed inline text links. LinkXL takes a novel approach to buying and selling text links in that the advertising links are targeted to relevant keywords on a particular site and not just a floating link on a blog’s sidebar or a website’s footer such as with TLA or TNX.

LinkXL’s techniques are more like Kontera ContentLink, Adbrite inline ads or Chitika inline ads in that LinkXL delivers text link advertisting within existing content on your site or blog. All of this is accomplished using a fully automated system that distributes links based completely on a publishers preferences and settings.

If you’re a webmaster who is concerned with Google’s crackdown on buying and selling text advertising links, LinkXL has a soluton for you that won’t anger the Google gods because publishers have the option of choosing to have links tagged as nofollow. The nofollow option is what makes LinkXL a truly contextual advertising system as opposed to another link selling for pagerank scenario.

The Basics for Publishers

LinkXL seems to have a very innovative system for the automated placement of links. The publisher is allowed complete control of pricing of links based on Google pagerank and publishers can choose whether links are followed or nofollowed.

After you’ve added your site, you’re prompted to add filters for your website to tell the LinkXL engine which pages in your site you will be indexing in the system for link placement. The filters allow wildcards, so for example, you could only sell links on your forum or blog by using a filter such as /blog/* or /forum/* and links will only be placed in those directories.

As the United States military increases the use of robots like unmanned drones in battle, it increases the danger that our enemies will take and adapt the technology to use against us, according to Peter Warren Singer, senior fellow and director of the 21st Century Defense Initiative at the Brookings Institution. “Just like what happened in software, warfare is going open source,” he told an audience last week at RSA 2010 in San Francisco. This means terrorists and other enemies of the U.S. can not only get their hands on top-of-the-line technology, but they can also get it cheaply.
from TechNewsWorld

Valve one of the largest distributors of online games, has announced that it will make its Steam online gaming service and proprietary gaming engine, Source, available on the Mac. The service, Steamworks for the Mac, comes equipped with Steam Play, a feature that allows play on either a PC or Mac at no additional charge. It also supports Steamworks APIs. The inclusion of WebKit into Steam and of OpenGL into Source gives the company a lot of flexibility, according to John Cook, director of Steam Development.
from TechNewsWorld

A new industry group hopes to improve the design and construction of data centers through the application of open source principles. Dubbed the “Open Source Data Center Initiative,” the group was formed last week by GreenM3 along with the University of Missouri and ARG Investments. The University is providing administrative support, while ARG hopes to implement some of the resulting ideas at its Ewing Industry Park location. Nokia’s Michael Manos, vice president of service operations, is serving as an adviser.
from TechNewsWorld

Even the most prolific users say Twitter has become more useful as a way to tap in to the discussions of the day than to broadcast their own thoughts.

from NYT > Personal Tech

The company’s network pushes the limits of translation technology and has become a favored source for millions.

from NYT > Internet

EBay, recovering from unprofitable quarters and falling market share, has recast its site to make it more attractive to new kinds of shoppers, like the carbon conscious.

from NYT > Internet

The Game Developers Conference gave us a very interesting music game: Power Gig: Rise of the SixString. The most obvious description of it is Guitar Hero with a real guitar.

It is developed by Seven45 Studios, a sister company of First Act, leading musical instrument maker responsible for making the entry-level guitars, basses, and other instruments found at such retailers as target and Wal-Mart.

The guitars that Power Gig comes with are reported to look like the guitars used by younger jammers, and they can be hooked up to any guitar amp. I believe that these games are set up to work for the Xbox 360 or Playstation 3, and my source tells me that there is some sort of “dampening block” that holds the strings in place, and the guitar’s fingerboard controls the game.

So, will this Power Gig make Guitar Hero and Rock Band players want to play a real guitar. I would have to say that it does remove the middleman.

Also, does it really make sense that our retail stores have shelves full of plastic instruments but nothing of the real thing? By the way, when Power Gig: Rise of the SixString arrives this fall, but will also include a microphone and drums. I wonder if those will be the real thing too.

Source

from Coolest Gadgets

It’s not too difficult to pick up on that there seems to be a common color among amps that you find onstage.  It’s not that manufacturers are incapable of creating a different color combination, it’s more that most bands prefer their sound equipment to blend in with the woodwork.  Well for the bands that want something a little different for a change, Orange has a whole set of brightly colored sound equipment.  I’m sure you can guess what color they all feature.

In recent events they came out with the Thunder 30, which is expected to be released sometime during the spring.  The Thunder 30 features four EL84 class power valves that will kick out 30 watts.  One new portion about this new gadget is that it has a twin channel setup.  It also has an FX loop, standard clean channel and a dedicated overdrive/distortion channel with shape control.  It appears to be a great choice for those that value both sound quality as well as looks.

Source: Crunchgear

from Coolest Gadgets