In this article we are going to take a look at the Vizio E420VL 42 Inch LCD high definition TV. to begin with let’s take a look at some of the technical details of this flat-panel TV.

Looking for full HD at the 1080p level that this set has it. The refresh rate is clocked at 120Hz. though not as fast as some of the newer TV still good enough for most sporting events. The dynamic contrast ratio is pretty impressive at 100,000 to 1. it comes with SRS TruVolume and TruSurround HDTN sound. a cool feature is the Ambient Light Sensing technology.

The technical features above are just the tip of the iceberg and it quite obvious this set offer a whole lot more. for example the 42-inch screen offers a 1920 x 1080 pixels and allows for over one billion colors. The resolution is a full 1080 which give this set a whopping 2 million pixels providing a excellent clarity and razor sharp images.

Deep blacks and bright whites are provided courtesy of a Dynamic Contract Ratio of 100K to 1. this goes along real well with the 120 Hz refresh rate we wrote about earlier and the ambient lighting feature that automatically adjust the set for the best picture no matter what type of lighting is in the room.

As far as sound is concerned the Vizio E420VL has really good sound that is provided via it’s two 10 watts speakers. However for the real theater feel you really should get a separate surround sound system. The remote that is included with this TV is pretty cool and stylish. with it you can control every function of the Vizio. this TV is Energy Star 4.1 compliant and also comes with a one-year warrant on parts, labor, and technical support.

You really can’t go wrong with the Vizio E430VL as it is one of the best LCD TV in it’s price range.

As the years slip away, video games companies continuously give us new games to look forward to. but what if we want to play an older game? Unfortunately, consoles do not last forever and as we get older it seems that we simply lose the ability to play the games that entertained us as children (this statement ignores the Wii’s Virtual Console, of course). However, emulators provide a solution to the problem. Project 64 roms give us the ability to replay full Nintendo 64 games. Read on to learn more.

Emulators are light-weight programs that act as functional substitutions for gaming consoles. they not only allow you to play existing video games, but also hack games to create new levels, challenges, etc. Emulators are mostly used for older consoles, such as the NES or the SEGA Genesis, but can used for newer consoles (though they are generally in serious need of improvement).

How do Emulators Work?

Basically all you need to know (unless you want to make your own emulator) is that the emulator program is able to open files known as ROMs or ISOs. ROMs are images of games that originally used cartridges (SNES, N64, etc.), and ISOs are images of games that were originally on discs (PS, Dreamcast, etc.). However, one emulator cannot play all ROMs or ISOs. To play a SNES ROM, you need an emulator that acts as a SNES. To play a PS ISO, you need a PS Emulator. To play 64 roms, you need an emulator like Project 64. Make sense? Good.

What are the Benefits to using an Emulator?

Emulators allow you to enjoy a seemingly infinite number of games free-of-charge on your own computer, they take up a very insignificant amount of space on your hard drive (unless you’re using an emulator for a new console), and they allow you to save your game whenever and wherever you see fit. I (Xalo) own the original Chrono Trigger for the SNES. However, I imagine many of you guys grew up with an N64 or even a later console, completely missing out on a legendary game. once a console has lived out its lifespan and the only alternative is to buy it again to play on another console (which will again be replaced in about 3-5 years), what are you supposed to do? Emulators offer the only solution for gamers who just want to relive the classics they grew up with.

So They’re Perfect, right?

Well, nothing is perfect. The ESA has made it illegal (and often times impossible) to download some ROMs, making it difficult to find the game you’re looking for. they make it illegal on the grounds that the Wii’s Virtual Console is designed to let you relive your childhood by selling you yesterday’s technology at today’s prices. also, many download sites look a little sketchy and should not be trusted immediately. Oftentimes the companies that made these original games are no longer in existence and are definitely not making any more money from sales of the game itself. So, buy the game on virtual console if you wish, but we prefer the comfort of our computers. There’s nothing quite like the ability to save your state at any point in the game with a Project 64 rom. also, if you don’t want to get frustrated or have your hands burst in flames, we recommend you purchase a USB controller. they are around $10-$15 new but are definitely worth it if you plan on playing any fighting games (see Street Fighter).

So which Emulators Should I Download?

We recommend the following emulators:

+ RockNESX – NES emulator

+ ZNES – SNES emulator

+ Visual Boy – Advance, GB, GBC, and GBA emulator

+ Project64 – N64 emulator

Sponsored by NFL Network

Andrew Luck, QB, Stanford: by now, you’ve heard all the superlatives thrown Luck’s way. Depending on which television talking sock puppet is mouthing the words at any given moment, the Stanford signal caller is a once-in-a-generation talent, the next John Elway/Dan Marino/Y.A. Tittle, and oh yeah, we have no video proof, but maybe he can walk on water, too.

With hype like that, the biggest thing to keep an eye on is whether the presumptive no. 1 pick in waiting underperforms anywhere along the way. if Luck, who threw for 3,517 yards and 37 touchdowns in 13 games in 2011, simply does what he’s supposed to do, the no. 1 slot is sealed. if he stumbles, however, the next guy on our list will get a closer look from the Indianapolis Colts, who own the top pick. which brings us to …

Robert Griffin III, QB, Baylor: RG3 raised a few eyebrows recently when he told Dan Patrick’s radio show that he doesn’t plan on throwing at the NFL Scouting Combine. but that’s OK, we all know the Heisman Trophy winner can throw, with just a hair under 4,000 yards and 36 touchdowns in 2011.

Something to watch when Griffin hits the field in Indianapolis: His 40-yard dash speed. Can he hit the magical 4.4-second mark that makes scouts swoon? if so, expect QB-starved teams like Seattle, Miami and Washington to burn up St. Louis GM Jay Zygmunt’s phone line looking to make a deal for the Rams’ number-two pick.

Morris Claiborne, CB, LSU: The highest-rated defensive player on most mock drafts is there for a reason. he appears to have all the tools to become a great shutdown corner and can return kicks, too. He’ll look awfully attractive to a team like Tampa Bay at the no. 5 spot, which gave up a league-worst 494 points in 2011.

We don’t need the NFL Scouting Combine to tell us that Claiborne can run fast or catch the ball. but how does his strength measure up, given that he’s somewhat undersized at 6-1 and 185 pounds? A strong performance in the bench press should seal Claiborne’s top-five draft status.

3D animation softwares enable the editor of videos to add an authentic view of the video he/she is editing. These effects that are able to be added are the selling points of films. Sometimes, the story of a movie is overlooked by the technicality and the way it was edited. These effects are made from animation software that entitles the user to give the video the very best rendition possible.

There are many 3D animation softwares on the market these days. there are some things that you must consider when you want to venture in this exciting field. the requirements for this software are too high for the average computer. because of the 3D nature of the programs, a high-end video card is required to support the demands of the software. Also, a high-rimmed hard drive is a must because the rendered videos and unpolished materials eat up a substantial amount of hard disk space. the result of having limited hard drive space when you edit 3D animation is that it can cause unwanted interruptions and it can cause the pc to lag. Another thing that is important is the amount of usable physical RAM. Virtual memory/swap files are unacceptable because not only are they slow, they also take up much needed hard disk space.

3D animation software like Adobe after effects is used in the making of films. this can make a person fly above the sky and even go to the moon if the editor wants it. there are also other effects available. From creating gory special effects for intros of horror films to soft flowing musical pieces, this software is essential for adding the specific effects the director is trying to present to his viewers.

As tedious as it is, video editing can be used on debuts, audiovisual presentations, meetings and more. the perks of using this kind of editing software can get you and your team recognition and appreciation. there are also great job opportunities for video editing enthusiasts. the key to success is always patience and creativity. Though not every video editing software renders great work, there is the chance to improve your abilities by using software that does render great work. with this kind of skill, ability and determination, you can help your friends with their projects and assignments and even build your own video editing empire. Your future is filled with possiblities when utilizing this type of expertise.

A female employee was fired from her job at a L’Oreal facility in new Jersey. she filed a lawsuit against the cosmetics company, claiming that her termination was a pretext to fire her based on her age. her case made its way to the U.S. Court of Appeals, Third Circuit.

The woman had worked at the Piscataway, NJ facility for nearly 30 years, from October 1980 to March 2009. she spent most of her time at the company as a packaging operator. This position required quality checks on units of production to ensure that the units were in accordance with product specifications. Employees were given negative performance points for any quality-check errors. any worker who reached 18 negative performance points within a year’s time had the potential of being terminated.

In November 2008, L’Oreal informed employees that productivity had declined, and the company would consequently be offering a voluntary early retirement package to packaging operators over the age of 55 with at least five years of employment. The plaintiff was eligible for the retirement package but did not accept the offer.

Before the company had proposed the retirement package, the plaintiff had accumulated only a few negative performance points and was “well regarded” by her supervisors. following the offer, however, an inspection error and two separate labeling errors resulted in the woman exceeding 18 negative performance points. her employment was subsequently terminated.

The plaintiff alleged that the real reason for her firing was her rejection of the retirement package offer and her age. she filed an action in a new Jersey state court, claiming a violation of the new Jersey Law Against Discrimination (LAD). This law, which is similar to the Civil Rights Act, prohibits unlawful discrimination based on, among other things, a person’s race, religious beliefs, nationality, or, as alleged in this case, age. L’Oreal removed the case to a federal court. following a period of discovery – which typically involves the parties gathering and exchanging evidence – the district court granted summary judgment in favor of the company.

The plaintiff appealed the decision. The appeals court noted that, with a discrimination claim under the new Jersey LAD, the claimant must first make his/her case, after which point the employer is to present a “legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason” for termination. The burden of proof then moves to the plaintiff. In this case, the district court accepted the company’s reason for termination and did not believe that the plaintiff had adequately proven that the reason was pretextual. The plaintiff argued this point, stating that she had provided sufficient evidence to show pretext. The appeals court, however, agreed with the initial decision, believing that the plaintiff’s arguments had “[failed] to cast any doubt” on the company’s reason for firing and that the retirement package was intended only to reduce the workforce and not rid the company of older employees. As such, the appeals court affirmed the original ruling.

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Don’t you just hate it when your mobile phone battery wont even last until you get home? how it goes flat every time you talk, use the camera, listen to a song or browse the internet? It really is very frustrating to have a weak battery that cannot hold much power to last a day with average activity. Reasons for a weak battery are the misuse of the battery and the lack of proper maintenance. The capacity of a mobile phone battery is measured by its standby time and talk time. It is measured in milli-amph hours (mAh). Rechargeable batteries have three main types, Nickel Cadmium (NiCd), Nickel Metal Hydride (NiMH), and Lithium Ion (LiIon). Lithium Ion (LiIon) batteries are what you find in most mobile phones and in order to preserve the battery you might want to follow these steps.

1. You do not need all the sounds. Using heavy mp3 ring tones, keypad tones, vibrating and other chimes together are unnecessary. if you want a ring tone, switch off your vibrating mode. if you are using vibration then turn off mp3 ringtones. Turn down the overall volume of your phone as loud mobiles can be annoying and prone to battery wastage. Remember that vibration mode drains out most of your battery power.

2. there is an option on your phone to reduce the brightness of the screen. Reduce it to about fifty percent. Brightness is one of the main causes for a battery to run down quickly.

3. Turn down the backlight setting. five seconds of backlight is more than enough.

4. Bluetooth is another major factor that can reduce your battery power considerably. Always keep it turned off when you are not using it. Check for the Bluetooth indicator to make sure, you haven’t left it on.

5. Close all application when you are not using them. Exit your internet browser when you do not need it.

6. Make sure to keep your phone in cool and dry conditions. too much heat or moisture can damage the phone and battery.

7. Once charging is complete unplug it. Do not leave it connected to the power. even though it is charging no more, it can heat up your battery and decrease the battery life.

8. Replace the battery with a good one when the old one runs out of its effectiveness.

9. buy a safe mobile phone charger that suits your voltage requirements. You might want to have more than one mobile phone charger, when it is so, buy a reliable and user friendly one.

10. let your battery fully discharge once every month and fully charge it to keep up the battery health.

Panasonic launched its 2012 Australian line of cameras over the weekend on Norfolk Island. That’s not technically in Australia, but close enough, and certainly a fine spot for some very pretty photo work.Panasonic’s got a lot of cameras in its 2012 lineup, from the cheap and cheerful $129 DMC-S2, via the waterproof DMC-FT4 and DMC-FT20 models and up to the flagship model in the compact range, the TZ30. the entry level models, from my limited hands-on time, are pretty much exactly what you’d expect of inexpensive cameras; they’re not spectacular, and I’d find it hard to get excited by them, but they’re priced accordingly.

I did spend a fair bit more time testing out the TZ30, a $449 model that’ll hit store shelves in April. It’s a 14.1 megapixel model with LEICA DC VARIO-ELMAR lens, Full HD AVCHD video recording (1920×1080/50p) and inbuilt GPS functionality. Test shots are below; all I’ve done to them is crop them down.

The TZ30 certainly shoots well at a basic level. the panorama mode stitches very well and it’s a solid camera to hold that’s not going to tax too many keen point and shoot photographers in terms of complexity. the GPS function is disabled by default, but I quickly worked out why. Without it, the battery ticked down reliably when shooting; with it on it was munched away at a much faster pace. the creative modes are fun to play with, but they’re not exactly blessed with a lot of additional creative scope. that marks the TZ30 out for those who aren’t quite ready to step up to a micro 4/3rds or DSLR. As such it’d be a fair choice based on my limited hands-on time, although at the $449 asking price it’s stepping perilously close to the kinds of prices that last year’s 4/3rds and DSLR models sell for.

On the camcorder side, Panasonic’s top end unit is the HC-X900M, a 3MOS-based 1920×1080/50p camcorder with optional 3D lens that’ll retail for $1799 (with the 3D lens an additional $399) in April. I didn’t get to test out the 3D lens, sadly, and more annoyingly, the test footage I shot of the X900M’s excellent image stabilisation got killed by a corrupt memory card. You’ll have to take my word for it that its image stabilisation is highly impressive stuff.

Footage I did manage to save came from one of Panasonic’s vertical camcorders, the waterproof $349 HX-WA2. Test footage, taken from snorkelling is below.

I’m not a huge fan of pistol grip style camcorders, as I find them somewhat difficult to hold, but the WA2 certainly survived more than an hour’s dunking in salt water and a few thumps against coral along the way without too many problems. It’ll also manage stills, although predictably for a camcorder, not quite as well as it does video.

Alex Kidman travelled to Norfolk Island as a guest of Panasonic.

Chicago— Young people want their music, television and movies now — even if it means they get these things illegally.

A recent Columbia University survey found, in fact, that 70 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds said they had bought, copied or downloaded unauthorized music, TV shows or movies, compared with 46 percent of all adults who’d done the same.

With such an entrenched attitude, what can be done about widespread online piracy?

Certainly law enforcement has gone after scofflaws like these, hitting them with fines and, in some cases, even jail time. Congress is considering controversial anti-piracy bills that would, among other things, forbid search engines from linking to foreign websites accused of copyright infringement. and there are lawsuits pitting media heavyweights against Internet firms — notably Viacom’s billion-dollar litigation against YouTube.

But here’s a radical notion to consider: What if young people who steal content weren’t viewed as the problem?

What if they and advocates for maximum online access could persuade the entertainment industry to loosen its tight grip on its coveted, copyrighted material — quite the opposite of what the industry is trying to do right now?

“The real problem is not pirates downloading illegally, but a failure to innovate on the part of the content providers,” said Steven Budd, a law student at Drexel University in Philadelphia.

Like it or not, that’s how a lot of people of his generation view the situation. and some experts think they’re gaining clout, as they insist on easy access to music and other content while the Internet world loudly protests anti-piracy legislation that it said unfairly puts the responsibility of policing piracy sites on search engines and other sites.

“We’ve seen the emergence of a real social movement around these issues,” said Joe Karaganis, vice president of the American Assembly, a public policy institute at Columbia University, which oversaw the recent survey, funded by a grant from Google.

He’s talking, in part, about “blackouts” staged by popular Internet sites that included Wikipedia, the user-generated online encyclopedia, and Reddit, the social news website. with support from Google, Facebook and Twitter, they were protesting the proposed federal anti-piracy bills.

But here’s the surprising part — a lot of young people don’t necessarily expect to get movies, TV shows and music for free.

“I do think people would pay for this content if it’s reasonably priced and it’s available when they want to watch it,” said Srikant Mikkilineni, a law student at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa.

Not wanting to mar his law school record, Mikkilineni pays for the songs, movies and TV shows he downloads. But he does so grudgingly. “Right now, they want us to pay multiple times for the same content,” he said, complaining that that’s not reasonable.

If he buys a DVD, for instance, it’s $15. He can watch it on his laptop, but it’s illegal for him to copy it in order to watch it on his iPod or smart phone.

Many young people point to Apple’s iTunes service as a model that could be replicated by other entertainment companies.

“iTunes changed the landscape for music because it made it far too convenient and much easier than downloading music through alternative methods (even illegal ones),” said Matt Gardner, an information technology student at Rochester Institute of Technology in new York.

But even more than convenience, a recent study at Duke University found that cost was the major factor that drives college students to copy entertainment content illegally. Researchers there found that the lower the students’ income, including their parents’ income, the more likely they were to search for free, illegal options.

To address the issue of cost, the study’s authors suggested that universities consider making licensing agreements with services that sell entertainment content so that students could get a discount.

Cornell University is one institution that has experimented with this. From 2004 to 2006, an anonymous donor paid for two years’ worth of Napster service for Cornell students, but students ultimately declined to have their student activity fees raised to continue the service because the music couldn’t be played on all devices, according to the Duke study.

There are those who doubt that students would pay for content they can pirate, especially when the habit has become so ingrained.

“Nobody’s going to pay you for something they can get for free,” said Glenn MacDonald, an economics professor at the Olin School of Business at Washington University in St. Louis.

So he asks: What if you gave music and movies to consumers for free, or asked them to pay what they thought the content was worth?

Some bands such as Radiohead are already doing that — in essence, using their songs to build a following and entice people to pay to see them in concert and, once there, to buy their merchandise.

The song becomes the ad, MacDonald said. Or a movie on the small screen becomes the driving force for a line of merchandise or drives the wish to see it again on a big screen in 3-D or at a special theater event. A free clip from a TV show seen online draws viewers to the show.

“It’s like a bar. They give you the peanuts so you buy the beer,” MacDonald said.

He notes that music companies already take a cut of money made from concerts, merchandise and endorsements. so he thinks that should, at the very least, offset the cost of the recorded music to consumers, who’ve been increasingly willing to pay big prices to see artists live.

“Music companies would be better served by increasing their focus on how to make artists’ music, and especially their concerts, even better,” MacDonald said.

Nice thought, but not realistic, said Thomas Carpenter, general counsel for legislative affairs for the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, a union that represents people working in the entertainment industry.

As it stands, he said 90 percent of the earnings that a musician currently makes under a recording contract is tied directly to royalties from sales, including lawful downloads. for actors, he said, it’s about 50 percent.

“There’s a lot at stake — much more than most people realize,” Carpenter said.

And he adds, “You have to be paid in order to be good. You have to use the funds from your projects to fund your future creativity.”

Still even some people who’ve spent their careers defending copyrights say it’s time to find some middle ground.

“It really is a failure to come up with practical, reasonable models for sales and distribution,” said Michael R. Graham, a Chicago attorney who specializes in trademark and copyright law. “There’s a real disconnect.”

Like many, he thinks iTunes has set the standard for the future.

Another possible approach: licensing agreements — with online services, for instance, paying a fee to content creators so they can provide it to consumers for free or for a monthly subscription fee.

Popular options, so far, include online music streaming services such as Spotify and Pandora. Others point to movie and TV services such as Netflix, though some complain that content on Netflix’s online streaming service is still too limited. Hundreds of thousands of people also quit Netflix last year after it started charging more to those who wanted both the streaming service and DVDs sent to them in the mail — another indication of just how much impact the public can have in these matters.

A major lawsuit now before a federal appeals court has put a spotlight on these issues.

Viacom inc. is appealing a lower court ruling that found YouTube, Google inc.’s popular video sharing service, is protected from copyright infringement claims. Viacom claims that YouTube is making millions when people post copyrighted videos —including some shows Viacom owns. YouTube said it forces people to remove the content when discovered, as the law allows.

During October proceedings before the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan, Judge Roger Miner asked, “How in the world can damages be computed here?”

“The number could be quite large,” Viacom attorney Paul Smith said.

Miner responded: “Maybe what you’re really looking for is a license agreement.”

Smith said that was possible — an outcome that some would consider a win for those who want greater access to content on the Internet.

Whatever happens, college student Omar Ahmad said the entertainment industry has to realize that people his age aren’t likely to change their piracy habits, even with the threat of more serious punishments that Congress is considering.

“They’re going to continue doing it — that’s the truth,” said Ahmad, a senior at Seton Hall University who’s also manager of the new Jersey school’s radio station.

Karaganis at Columbia agrees that young people and the Internet community in general have proven they can influence the entertainment industry, whether it likes it or not.

“Change is inevitable,” he said. “The question is how quickly will it happen — and how much of a fortress will be built around intellectual property in the meantime.

“Now, I think all bets are off.”

MSP Dave Thompson

Local Badenoch MSP Dave Thompson has stressed the Scottish Government’s determination to oversee provision of a modern broadband service for all of Scotland, starting with rural areas previously left behind in early internet coverage.

Already this month, a further £40 million has been announced to improve rural broadband links in Scotland.

However, modern broadband coverage in many remote and sparsely populated areas will have to be provided through alternative technologies as the cost of laying fibre optic cables to every home and business would be prohibitive.

The most economic way of doing this is via the 4G mobile phone network.

But mr Thompson said there are concerns that Westminster, which has responsibility for telecommunications provision and policy, will fail to compel 4G coverage in sparsely populated areas of Scotland.

While Ofcom, the communications regulator, has increased its coverage obligation from 95 per cent to 98 per cent of the UK population, there are concerns in the industry that the two per cent not covered would largely be found in rural parts of Scotland.

“Without 4G coverage to enable delivery of superfast broadband, this would have to be provided via a ridiculously expensive fibre optic cable network or a satellite link,” said mr Thompson.

“while the Scottish Government is doing everything it possibly can, this recommendation by Ofcom for Westminster is not helping. the 98 per cent UK requirement must also hold for Scotland too.

“I have been contacted by a leading digital communications company which specialises in provision via the 4G network to express its concern about the level of coverage in Scotland.

“a spokesman for Arqiva stated that, while Westminster may ensure its 98 per cent target for the UK is met with universal coverage in England and more populated areas of the devolved nations, Scotland on its own may only have 90 per cent coverage.

“that missing 10 per cent would predominantly be found in the country’s sparsely populated and difficult to cover areas, such as the West Highlands and Islands.

“that is why I believe that the Scottish Parliament must press for the 98 per cent target to be met in each of the devolved nations too but unfortunately that is a matter reserved to Westminster.”

This week mr Thompson was pleased to be told that Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE), which has responsibility for overseeing delivery of superfast broadband, is committed to reaching between 85 and 90 per cent of the area’s population with this by 2015.

HIE has also stated its aim of connecting the remaining 10 to 15 per cent of premises to a different broadband service of at least 2Mb per sec by the same date. Further, HIE has committed to provide the faster broadband connection to the whole region by 2020.

“in selecting BT as the preferred bidder to provide modern broadband coverage for the Highlands, I was pleased recently to be told that HIE intends to ensure that the requirement to provide coverage for the full area is built into the contract with BT,” said mr Thompson.

“This will mean that a range of technologies will have to be considered to ensure that as many as possible can be covered.

“However, I am concerned that Westminster, will fail to place an obligation to cover the same proportion of Scotland as the UK on companies that bid for the new 4G licences.

“unfortunately Westminster’s track record on providing up to date infrastructure for rural parts of Scotland does not inspire confidence that this will be achieved.”

Mr Thompson noted that, until the final contract is signed for broadband provision, it is not possible to state how much funding is needed but he noted that £115 million had already been allocated to rural broadband provision in the current year’s budget and that further funds would be made available as work progressed.

FRAMINGHAM, Mass., Feb 15, 2012 (BUSINESS WIRE) –Rand Worldwide /quotes/zigman/3456273 RWWI -6.98% , a global leader in providing technology solutions to organizations with engineering design and information technology requirements, today announced its IMAGINiT Technologies division has released IMAGINiT Clarity. this web-based solution from the same IMAGINiT software development team who created Scan to BIM was built specifically to enhance the Autodesk Revit Server platform. it allows team members and external partners to share one centrally located BIM model securely from multiple locations.

“Our software development team pride themselves on listening to the feedback from our global customer base and then creating elegant solutions to solve the biggest challenges experienced,” says Marc Dulude, CEO, Rand Worldwide. “Once again, we’re launching software which will meet the demands of a global audience of firms using Revit.”

The distinct business benefits impact the bottom line by enhancing collaboration and significantly cutting time and resources required to complete necessary tasks. Architecture, engineering, and construction firms, as well as property owners, with multiple offices and multiple partners will be able to work seamlessly together using the software’s comprehensive online dashboard controls, programmable security settings, and a variety of automated time-saving solutions for tracking and reporting progress.

this unique web-based software offers an unrivalled experience for the entire ecosystem of partners collaborating on the BIM model.

Project-Level Security

IMAGINiT Clarity offers a range of security settings based on the project team members’ needs. Administrators have complete control over who can see which project, what users can modify, and what they can access. there are three levels of access for users: administrator for full access; project coordinator for partial access; and user for limited access.

as additions are made to the model, the software automatically tracks and calculates the changes, saving hours of labor and eliminating human error. The software automates generating files in formats such as PDF, DWF, Data Export and Image Export. Since the processing of these files can be done on the central server, this frees up the user’s computer to do more high value tasks instead of waiting for documents to generate.

Customized Project Reporting

Automated reporting tasks can be run on-demand or on a scheduled basis. Reports can be made to the exact specifications of the administrator without any modification to the Revit data. Administrators can also program the software to send out email notifications of various changes to the model to selected users as needed. for example, architects in the healthcare industry can now automatically generate room data sheets which are kept in-sync as the model evolves. The software also allows the sharing of model data with people who don’t use Revit by providing automated options to transform the model data into an excel sheet or PDF.

Dashboard Management System

IMAGINiT Clarity offers a remote dashboard which displays the real-time network health of all central and local servers. a constant activity stream records how the model is being modified and by which users. The dashboard also provides alerts as they arise such as Model Locks or connectivity errors, assisting the administrator to both pinpoint concerns and quickly correct the issue.

Availability & Pricing

IMAGINiT Clarity can be packaged with Autodesk Revit Server or can be integrated into an existing installation. Set-up is quick and supported by IMAGINiT’s trusted team of experts. Pricing is dependent on number of locations, users, and implementation services required. Maintenance and subscription fees apply. for more information, visit: imaginit.com/clarity.

about IMAGINiT Technologies

IMAGINiT Technologies, a division of Rand Worldwide, advances the way architects and engineers design, develop, and manage projects. Customers of this leading professional services and technology company include organizations in the building, infrastructure, manufacturing and facilities management industries. Fortune 500 and Engineering News Record’s Top 100 organizations work with IMAGINiT Technologies to gain competitive advantages through expert technology consulting, implementation, training, and support services. as one of the world’s largest integrators of Autodesk 3D design and engineering software, the team leverages unrivalled industry experience to design systems that accelerate innovation while improving project quality and profitability.

any and all trademarks making reference to or related to Rand Worldwide or IMAGINiT Technologies are registered and/or owned by Rand Worldwide, inc., and/or its subsidiaries, affiliates, and/or other legal holders under the Rand Worldwide, inc. name.

Autodesk, DWF and Revit are registered trademarks or trademarks of Autodesk, inc., in the USA and/or other countries. All other brand names, product names, or trademarks belong to their respective holders.

SOURCE: Rand Worldwide

Company Contact Rand Worldwide Chantale Marchand, +1 508-663-1411 or Public Relations Contact Cross Border Communications Trell Huether, +1 416-848-1885

Copyright Business Wire 2012

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Features

It’s easy to wax nostalgic about old technology – to remember fondly our first Apple IIe or marvel at the old mainframes that ran on punched cards. But no one in their right mind would use those outdated, underpowered dinosaurs to run a contemporary business, let alone a modern weapons system, right?

While much of the tech world views a two-year-old smartphone as hopelessly obsolete, large swaths of our transportation and military infrastructure, some modern businesses and even a few computer programmers rely daily on technology that hasn’t been updated for decades.

If you’ve recently bought a MetroCard for the New York City Subway or taken money from certain older ATMs, for instance, your transaction was made possible by IBM’s OS/2, an operating system that debuted 25 years ago and faded out soon after.

A recent federal review found that the U.S. Secret Service uses a mainframe computer system from the 1980s. That system apparently works only 60 percent of the time. Here’s hoping that uptime statistics are better for the ancient minicomputers used by the U.S. Department of Defense for the Minuteman Intercontinental Ballistic Missile system, Navy submarines, fighter jets and other weapons programs. Those systems, according to the consultants who help keep them going, will likely be used until at least the middle of this century.

Here are a few stories of the computers that time forgot and the people and institutions that stubbornly hold on to them.

Punch-Card Accounting

Sparkler Filters' IBM 402, with self-employed field engineer Duwayne Leafley in the foreground.

Sparkler Filters of Conroe, Texas, prides itself on being a leader in the world of chemical process filtration. If you buy an automatic nutsche filter from them, though, they’ll enter your transaction on a “computer” that dates from 1948.

Sparkler’s IBM 402 is not a traditional computer, but an automated electromechanical tabulator that can be programmed (or more accurately, wired) to print out certain results based on values encoded into stacks of 80-column Hollerith-type punched cards.

Companies traditionally used the 402 for accounting, since the machine could take a long list of numbers, add them up and print a detailed written report. in a sense, you could consider it a 3000-pound spreadsheet machine. That’s exactly how Sparkler Filters uses its IBM 402, which could very well be the last fully operational 402 on the planet. as it has for over half a century, the firm still runs all of its accounting work (payroll, sales and inventory) through the IBM 402. the machine prints out reports on wide, tractor-fed paper.

The punched cards used in the 402, with some mangled cards from a recently cleared jam in the card reader. the cards sit on the IBM 029 key-punch machine.

Of course, before the data goes into the 402, it must first be encoded into stacks of cards. A large IBM 029 key-punch machine – which resembles a monstrous typewriter built into a desk – handles that task.

Carl Kracklauer, whose father founded Sparkler Filters in 1927, usually types the data onto the punch cards. the company sticks with the 402 because it’s a known entity: Staffers know how to use it and they have over 60 years of company accounting records formatted for the device.

The key punch isn’t the only massive accessory in Sparkler’s arsenal. the 402 also links to an IBM 514 Reproducing Punch, which has been broken for three years. When it works properly, the 514 spits out punched “summary cards,” which typically contain the output of the 402’s operation (such as sum totals) for later reuse. Sparkler stores all of its punched data cards – thousands and thousands of them – in stacks of boxes.

Sparkler Filters' collection of IBM 402 programs on IBM plugboards.

The company also possesses dozens of 402 programs in the form of IBM plugboards. Computer programming in the 1940s commonly involved arranging hundreds of individual wires in a way that would likely drive a modern software engineer insane. in the 402’s case, a spaghetti-like pattern of wires attached to hundreds of connectors on each plugboard determines the operation of the machine and different plugboards can be pulled out and replaced as if they were interchangeable software disks. so you might insert one plugboard for handling, say, accounts receivable and a different one for inventory management.

Sparkler’s 402 is a such a significant computing relic that the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif., sent a delegation to the company last year to try and convince its executives to move to a more modern accounting system and donate the 402 to the museum. That will someday be an appropriate resting place for the 402, but as long as it still does its duty, the Texas company has no problem keeping its digital dinosaur living a little while longer.

Computers That Can’t Fail

When you see reports about the small, remote-controlled drones that the military uses to gather intelligence and target enemies in Pakistan and Afghanistan, it’s easy to assume that all our weaponry is equally modern. some significant weapons systems that our military depends on today, though, run on technology that dates back, in some instances, to the Vietnam War era.

The U.S. Navy’s ship-based radar systems and Britain’s Atomic Weapons Establishment, which maintains that country’s nuclear warheads, use PDP minicomputers manufactured in the 1970s by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). another user of the PDP is Airbus, the French jetliner manufacturer.

A DEC PDP-11 system in a photo from 1972.

The PDP was among the second wave of mainframes called minicomputers because they were only the size of a couple of refrigerators instead of big enough to fill a room.

The F-15 and F-18 fighters, the Hawk missile systems, parts of the U.S. Navy submarine fleet and Navy fighter test systems on aircraft carriers use DEC’s VAX minicomputers from the 1980s for various purposes, according to Lynda Jones of The Logical Company in Cottage Grove, Oregon, which helps keep these antiquated systems functioning.

A DEC VAX 11/780 system in a 1978 photo.

Because of their critical nature, many of these systems will be in continuous service long into the future, perhaps to the middle of this century. for instance, the Minuteman ICBM program, which uses DEC VAX systems for testing, recently received funding that will keep it going until 2030.

“These legacy systems are integrated into multibillion dollar systems as control or test systems,” Jones says. Replacing these old systems with modern machines, she explains, would cost millions of dollars and could potentially disrupt national security.

As it turns out, replacing those systems with modern hardware designed to work like the antiquated components is a decidedly less risky venture. Jones’ company is one of many that create systems to simulate older DEC minicomputers using newer, smaller and less power-hungry electronic parts. the replacement computers emulate the exact functionality of the original hardware – and run the same vintage software – so it appears to the rest of the system as if nothing has changed.

The Logical Company's NuVAX 3200, a modern system that replicates a DEC VAX.

That’s important because most of Logical’s customers are defense corporations refreshing old weapons technology under contract with the U.S. Department of Defense. “There are thousands of DEC systems in use for military applications around the world,” says Jones, “including PDPs from the 1970s, VAXes from the 1980s and Alphas from the 1990s.”

The United States developed many fighter jet and missile systems during the cold War era using DEC hardware for test and control functions, says Jones, because the company’s minicomputers were among the very first general-purpose machines that did not require water cooling and could be used in harsh environments.

The biggest problem with maintaining such ancient computer systems is that the original technicians who knew how to configure and maintain them have long since retired or passed away, so no one is left with the knowledge required to fix them if they break.

Even if someone does know how to fix them, finding replacement parts can be tricky. Stanley Quayle, a computer emulation consultant, has seen contractors desperate to find the parts they need. “I have a prospective customer supporting a U.S. missile defense system that is buying parts on eBay,” says Quayle. “Any parts they do find are as old or older than their system,” meaning they’re sometimes no more reliable than the pieces they replace.

The Apple IIe Warehouse

Kevin Huffman sitting next to his Apple lle at Huffman Industrial Warehouse in North Carolina, USA.

Lots of people fell in love with the Apple IIe when it was released in 1983. It supported a wide variety of software and hardware, it was reliable and its seven internal expansion slots made it extremely flexible.

For Kevin Huffman, who owns and operates Huffman Industrial Warehouse in Eden, N.C., that love has never waned. his firm stores and ships out goods for companies that rent his warehouse space and he regularly uses his vintage Apple IIe to track inventory and keep accounts.

Huffman got started with the Apple II line in college and later bought two identical Apple IIe systems from his brother-in-law in the mid-1980s, one of which he uses today. (He keeps the other unit as an emergency backup.)

Huffman’s Apple IIe setup is nothing fancy, but it is fully stocked. It’s equipped with 128 kilobytes of RAM, the standard 1MHz 6502 CPU and AppleSoft BASIC in ROM. It contains five expansion cards: a printer card, two disk interface cards, a serial port card and an 80-column video card. for peripherals, he uses an Apple DuoDisk unit, a 10in amber video monitor and a trusty workhorse of a printer – a Star NP-10 that “is still going strong at 26-plus years old,” he says.

Kevin Huffman's boxes of the six programs in the Manzanita ' the Business Accountant' software suite for the Apple lle.

Huffman runs an application suite on the Apple IIe called “The Business Accountant,” first published by Manzanita Software in 1984. Of the six applications in the suite, he uses five: General Ledger, Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, Inventory and Payroll. all of his data resides on the once-standard 5.25in floppy disks, but he’s not worried about data security: “I back up the floppies with a program called Copy II+.”

Huffman uses a modern PC for word processing, email and web browsing, but he’s reluctant to move away from his trusty Apple IIe for accounting work.

“I still use the machine because it is so simple to use, I know the software and I can still update the tax tables manually.” he adds, “The only glitch in the entire system is that it does not recognise the year 2000, so all my printed financial reports say 1912. But on the invoices, checks and other forms, it prints in the 11/14/12 format.”

He’s even tried emulating the Apple IIe and his favourite software on a modern machine, but to him, the full experience matters. “I thought about changing over to a more modern system, but there is nothing to be gained. as the old saying goes, ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.’”

The Color Computer Programming Assistant

John Kowalski's Tandy Color Computer 3 running BBS software in a photo from 1996.

Few vintage computers inspire as much active devotion as the Tandy Color Computer 3, first introduced in 1986. the CoCo 3 (as it is affectionately called by its fans) never sold as many units as home computers from Atari or Commodore, but that engendered an even stronger loyalty in its users.

The CoCo 3 marked the end of a well-received line of Color Computer products from RadioShack, which launched the first model in 1980. the third model in the series turned out to be an impressive swan song, adding support for 512KB of memory and implementing advanced graphics and sound enhancements – all while retaining backward compatibility with pre-CoCo 3 software.

It’s understandable, then, that some folks refuse to let go of their CoCo 3 units for either work or play. One such loyal user, John Kowalski, a former console game developer, still considers his CoCo 3 an indispensable tool.

“I turn it on, type in a quick program to do something I need done and let it run to get the results,” says Kowalski. “I think of it as my personal assistant – sometimes I program it to do tedious or repetitive tasks like automated document reformatting and I can continue working while it works beside me.”

John Kowalski's self-portrait from 1998 – in front of a wall of Color Computer 3 units.

Kowalski began his journey in CoCo-land with a Color Computer 2 in 1984. he traded up to the CoCo 3 in 1986 and stuck with the platform through the years, performing various hardware upgrades (upping the system RAM to 2MB and overclocking the 6809 CPU to a blistering 3.5MHz) along the way.

When Kowalski was programming console video games at Crystal Dynamics in the mid-to-late 1990s, his vintage CoCo 3 played a prominent role. “Every game I worked on had at least some data in it created on the CoCo,” he says. Titles like Namco Museum 50th Anniversary and Tron 2.0: Killer App benefited from the vintage machine, which Kowalski used as if it were a powerful programmable scientific calculator.

For an original title like Tron 2.0 for the Xbox, Kowalski used the CoCo 3 to test 3D techniques used in the game. “Many of the data sets used by the 3D engine were generated on the CoCo, like the tables for calculating depth and perspective in the 3D view and the data for fish-eye reduction of the view,” he says. “The texture map graphics used in the game were also translated into program data by a conversion tool I wrote on the CoCo.”

The cover of Tron 2.0: Killer App for the Xbox.

If speed wasn’t an issue, Kowalski would quickly type up a program in the CoCo’s built-in BASIC interpreter. in the cases that involved large amounts of graphics or sound data, he would turn to assembly language.

The latter technique proved quite handy when working on Namco Museum or Atari Anniversary, which both contained reworkings of classic 1980s arcade games. Kowalski used the CoCo to extract, convert and edit graphics data from the original arcade ROMs into formats a PlayStation 2 console could use. he also used the CoCo to translate vintage arcade source code and clean up sound samples used in the games.

With such an old machine, you might think it would be hard to export the working data to a more modern PC, but Kowalski has found no such problems. for years, he swapped standard 5.25in disks between his CoCo 3 and a Windows PC. Today, he simply connects a serial port between the CoCo and a PC, with the PC acting as a virtual disk drive emulator.

The cover of the Namco Museum 50th Anniversary game for the PlayStation 2, a game that Kowalski's CoCo 3 helped to create.

Kowalski says his current job designing electronics hardware doesn’t call for much data generation, so he doesn’t use the CoCo as frequently. But he hasn’t retired the classic machine; Kowalski keeps the 25-year-old PC on his main computer desk, ready to be called back into service at a moment’s notice.

HARLEY OGIER

SAMSUNG SERIES 7: an excellent and feature-packed TV, but the online ‘Smart’ experience falls flat.

REVIEW: Samsung’s 46-inch Series 7 ‘Smart TV’ is a brilliant television. It’s exceedingly thin, and lightweight enough to be wall-mounted without major structural work. the LED backlight provides sufficient brightness for daytime operation, colours are accurate, and 1080p video comes through sharp as can be. the only downside to image quality is mediocre upscaling of DVD-resolution content to fit the Series 7′s 1920 x 1080 pixels. whether that’s a downside or an excuse to replace your DVD collection with Blu-ray discs is really dependent on your budget. Viewing photos, playing videos or listening to music from a USB flash drive or hard drive is easy and reliable. Streaming video from your home network is also simple thanks to in-built Wi-Fi. you can even schedule recording to an optional USB hard drive. all this is great, and makes it all the more disappointing that the internet component of Samsung’s Smart TV offering is so poor. the TV’s ‘Smart Hub’ offers a range of apps, including one for free video haven YouTube. however, searching for specific clips is painful. Even using an Android phone as a remote via Samsung’s free app, you can’t just type in a search term: you have to enter it letter-by-letter using an onscreen keyboard which you control only with the four arrow buttons. Playlists and users’ channels seem to be entirely absent, and the interface is clunky. A web browser with Adobe Flash support gives you access to a whole world of video and interactive content. unfortunately, it’s very slow and prone to random lag, crashes and navigation issues. There are no apps or services that offer access to full-length mainstream movies or TV shows. you could almost justify the price for such a slim, high-quality TV. however, the dreadful internet features drag the whole thing down into the ranks of the average.

RRP incl GST: $4,299 Contact: samsung.co.nz

-PC World

There are a number of business and recreational reason why you need specialty paper. this type of printable paper may be used for a variety of purposes, including some great crafts. Scrapbooking, doing origami, even creating custom coloring books, all involve the use of specialty paper.

Scrapbooking is a great way to capture and preserve memories, especially since it involves multiple forms of media in combining writing and photographs. There is a vast, eclectic selection of specialty paper for scrapbooking from which to choose. The appropriate paper depends on your personal tastes and its intended purpose.

Using specialty paper for scrapbooking allows you to express a creative outlet and work in different mediums. There are no rules to scrapbooking; a scrapbook simply enables you to preserve a number of mementos. Scrapbooking is a marvelous way to preserve tangible memories such as letters, postcards, ticket stubs, and photographs.

Scrapbooking is a very relaxing pastime and there is a certain beauty to it. Scrapbooks do not need to look like Victorian relics; vibrant colors and bold design patterns are very popular in all aspects of scrapbooking, although, classic designs also remain popular.

When you shop for specialty paper for scrapbooking, you need to look for variety; having multiple paper options will allow you to choose paper that is appropriately festive or demure, depending on the nature of the keepsakes that you are saving. Vibrantly colored pages effectively offset custom stock sheets, such as the type that is used for wedding invitations. Pages with muter tones complement vibrantly colored items, such as playbills.

Origami is the ancient Japanese art of paper folding. It has varying levels of difficulty and requires different skill ranges. Basic origami is simple and straightforward, but advanced origami is complex and detail-oriented. The art of origami is best expressed with origami paper, which is a type of specialty paper. this specialty paper is available in two primary sizes and comes in many colors. to practice origami, you need to begin by making simple designs, such as paper boats, before you eventually progress to more complicated projects, such as paper cranes. Origami encourages dexterity and is a great skill to develop throughout your life.

Coloring is scientifically proven to be a therapeutic act. Coloring books are not just for children; sophisticated stained glass coloring books appeal to adults as well. Stained glass coloring books feature perforated translucent specialty paper that may be easily removed from the binding. when you hang a completed page on a window, sunlight is filtered through the colored portions, which makes it function like an actual stained glass window.

If you are looking for a coloring activity to do with a child, consider making your own coloring book sheets from home photographs. certain websites enable you to upload photos into programs that strip them of color; you then may print them out on the appropriate printable paper and color within the lines, like you do with an actual coloring book.

Specialty paper is an essential component to many relaxing activities. Although some hobbies may seem childish, these pursuits are suited for accompanying you into and through adulthood.

Remember the time long ago when you would save your Master Ball for hours upon hours of gameplay just to stand a chance against the extremely rare and powerful Pokemon known as Mewtwo? my how the times have changed. however, Nintendo hasn’t forgotten their past just yet. Today, the gaming company announced to players that this month, you’ll have the opportunity to relive the old days as Mewtwo makes his return to the Pokemon universe in Black & White. And, to add to the excitement, he’s not that hard to obtain.IGN reports that Mewtwo will be available as a Mystery Gift over the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection starting February 12th and ending on February 26th. after you obtain the mystery gift, you just need to leave an open space in your Pokemon party, talk to the man at the nearest Pokemon Center, and then the legendary psychic Pokemon will be destroying enemies left and right in no time.But, what special abilities will the limited edition Pokemon come with? “Mewtwo will arrive at level 70, and will know Shadow Ball (a Ghost-type move) and Electro Ball (a move Mewtwo normally cannot learn). It will also know Psystrike – a brand new signature move that allows trainers to inflict damage depending on their opponent’s Defense, and a skill that is normally only learned at Level 100.”"Mewtwo will come holding a King’s Rock, which can occasionally cause your opponent to flinch and miss its attack. This item also helps certain Pokemon evolve, as those who’ve completed their Pokedex well know. Finally, Mewtwo also comes with a Premier Ribbon, a special Ribbon that can’t be collected through normal gameplay.”So, what happens when the king of the original 150 takes on the region of Unova? That’s for you to find out on your Nintendo DS, DSi, or 3DS starting this coming Sunday.what do you think of Mewtwo’s resurrgence? Will you be picking it up? let us know either in the comments below, or tweet us @FilmThrasher on Twitter!

Many have a widget or two that they use frequently. Indeed, it’s only when these contraptions break down that they understand how much that they relied on it. When it does break down, they even get a little frantic to get it fixed so it pays off to know where to get the spares from well beforehand. An iPod touch-sensitive screen is probably one of the most typical breakages since they are a small fragile. on occasion, iTouch repairs can be done by the owner but they can also be given to qualified engineers to undertake this sort of work too. Many of us will certainly be frightened about opening up a gadget of any description. After all , many of us won’t ever have had the need to do such a thing. but with a little care and attention, it’s not that hard to slowly work out what goes where when it is simply the outer surrounding of the piece.

Sourcing spares for gadgets like these hasn’t ever been easier since the Net gives us access to several different kinds of sites. these sites do not necessarily need to be the first makers of the gadget they just buy up gigantic stocks of the breakable parts from the manufacturers and supply them at particularly reasonable rates. Indeed, if the owner does go direct to the manufacturer, they may probably pay a whole lot more for the part than sourcing from these outlets.

It can never be claimed enough but the tools for this kind of work are rather specialised. Small levers will get the back and front of the gadget and small screwdrivers will basically separate the parts within. It is that straightforward so even the amateur will be in a position to try this out one or more times in their lives. for those that believe they cannot do this for themselves, there are lots of technicians in the market that will undertake this sort of work. some are mobile and will come to site to mend the contraption while others will rely on postage facilities to get and send back the contraptions. whatever is suitable for the owner of the gizmo, this is all that counts mostly.

Most people are into recycling these days so it is really important that people dispose of the gadgets responsibly even when they’re buying a new piece. Batteries are notoriously hard to dispose of and they can take many years to break down on dump sites. It may be better to send the goods off to a kind of recycling plant, maybe one that deals with charity work for instance, in order that they can claim back as many parts to be used in other gizmos as possible .

Indeed, some of these places will actually send refurbished widgets off to other countries so that poorer folks can get some use of them and it also makes more folks used to this new electronic age that we are living in. This certainly must be the simplest way to lose unwanted goods. Click here : computer technology and breaking ten news for more data.

You’d think that buying a hard drive for a Mac is an easy choice: Just buy one marked “for Macs” and be done with it. the reality is far from easy, but it isn’t crazy hard either. We’re here to help you figure out the best hard drive for your Mac system.

So, you lost a bunch of data, and you’re finally getting around to setting up a backup for your Mac desktop or laptop. Count your lucky stars that we’ve grown past the need to shove a few hundred CD-R or DVD-R discs into your optical drive to backup your iMac, Mac mini, Mac Pro, or MacBook.

Basic hard drives are cheap enough to backup your whole 500GB Macintosh hard drive for a under $100. Spend a little more, and you’ll get niceties like 1.5-3TB of drive space (to keep more vintage backups in Time Machine), FireWire 800 (for faster transfers), Thunderbolt (fastest transfers), or even extra features like charging ports for your iPad. which brings us to the best justification for backing up your Mac: Time Machine is dead simple. Just plug in a new hard drive, and as long as the drive is larger than your internal HDD, Mac OS X will ask you to use the drive as a Time Machine backup drive. Say yes, and everything is handled automatically in the background. if the drive is a portable with USB 2.0 or FireWire 800, it’s even simpler: you only have to plug in one cord.

Other features like external capacity gauges are better suited to drives that you’re copying to manually, like the drive you use to transfer large files from one Mac to another or to a PC. Other features that may not be relevant for you average Mac user are USB 3.0 (There are no USB 3.0 ports on Macs as of yet), eSATA (ditto), and packed in backup software (Time Machine is fine for basic backups). That said, if you need to keep a certain folder backed up and brought offsite, file-based backup software can be helpful.

How about FireWire 800? if you have a MacBook Pro, Mac Pro, iMac, or Mac mini, the answer is yes, you should choose a drive with FireWire 800. On the MacBook Air, some MacBook Pros, or older MacBooks, the answer is “not really”, since they lack FireWire 800. FireWire 800 should be your interface of choice if you’re planning on creating an emergency boot drive, since Mac OS X has greater affinity for FireWire 800 for booting older Macs. Recent Macs will boot fine off of a USB drive.

Thunderbolt is another consideration, and is a good choice if you use your Mac to earn a living. Thunderbolt is simply the fastest direct attached interface right now (dual channel 10Gbps vs. 480Mbps for USB 2.0), and you can even stream multiple HD videos from a Thunderbolt drive while driving a 27-inch monitor from the same Thunderbolt port on a Mac. the factors that are preventing a wider adoption of Thunderbolt are the current high price of drives, the limited selction of drives at the moment, and the single Apple-sourced Thunderbolt cable, which is a bit pricey at $49 each. we recommend Thunderbolt for the graphics arts and engineering business users that absolutely need their work done now. Besides, businesses can write off the extra cost of the drives over time.

So, yes, you can buy just about any USB external hard drive and reformat it to use on your Mac, but whether you have an older Mac or a Mac with a fresh glass and aluminum body, it behooves you to get a drive with the fastest interface possible. For pre-2011 MacBook Air and MacBooks, you want a USB 2.0/3.0 drive, for pre-2011 MacBook Pro and desktops, that’s the FireWire 800 model, and for all new Macs (except the Mac Pro) since early 2011, a Thunderbolt drive is the fastest. Thunderbolt will become more reasonably priced in 2012, but there will still be a price premium for speed. In any case, having a Time Machine drive can mean the difference between success and failure if you ever lose a file, so backup your Mac.

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For more reviews of external hard drives, check out our Hard Drive Product Guide.

So last night on Tinychat, someone pointed out that as much content as I’ve churned out since I’ve been on MyIGN, I haven’t really posted a videogame-centric blog yet.

The Formative Years

Very early on, my parents introduced me to the NES, a system they had owned and played together before my conception (video game birth?!) and I quickly became addicted. My earliest memory of a game was beating Super Mario Bros. at about age 3, but rather than whooping in triumph or showing off to my parents, I simply sat and stared at the screen, wondering why it was over already. I wanted more.

I played the NES for years before an upgrade, and to this day I remember things like:

Being entranced by the opening theme of the original “Final Fantasy” but having absolutely no clue what to do after the character select screen

Pulling all-nighters with my only friend, Jimmy, on a game called “Guerilla Wars-” my first co-op experience

Playing “Kung Fu” just to hear the over-the-top ridiculous noises made by the “funny Chinese people”

Many a hyperventilated moment, when a game wouldn’t work and I had to go into “dust blow” mode

I was never anything close to “rich” growing up in a military family; in fact, even today, most military families (enlisted) are considered below middle class. so when I finally got the SNES, it had already been out for a few years, and we found one in the original packaging, bundled with Donkey Kong Country, for a meager $90! This is where I really opened up and blossomed, having what are still to this day my most cherished gaming moments:

My first Ultra-Combo in Killer Instinct, as well as my first erection, thanks to the lovely B. Orchid

“100-percenting” every single Donkey Kong Country game (my absolute favorite was DKC2, where your stats would be compared with Link and Mario!)

Plunging into the depths of Zebes as a dome-headed bounty hunter with an amazing array of tools

Every single time I grabbed a Red Turtle Shell drop and locked on to one of my helpless friends

And, most importantly, how much real emotion The Legend of Zelda: a Link to the past made me feel. I shivered in the rain, cowered before the dungeon bosses, cheered when I finally found the Hookshot, and wept when the Forest Child turned into a tree.

All the while, I had the Gameboy, of course, and many good memories at school consisted of hiding under the bleachers in the gym playing Metroid II, the Mario Land series, and once again my all time favorite GameBoy game, Link’s Awakening. Who would have thought that a game with only blacks and greens, over-simplified pixelated characters, and two major buttons would be able to make me weep like a baby over and over again?

Puberty is Called “Playstation”

Just as with the SNES, our low-income family was very late in purchasing the original Playstation, but when we finally did get it (August 26, 1998), it became the center of attention for my entire family. My mother, who can barely manage to send an email, used to stay up til sunrise playing Rampage. My father became obsessed with survival horror (and caused my own obsession). My little sister loved to play Spyro, but without any aim- she just liked to fly around the free-roam levels and gaze in awe at the television. My first game was Gex: Enter the Gecko, and although, looking back I can say it was not that great of a video game at all, I loved the hell out of it.

Favorite moments in PSX gaming:

Angling the camera in Tomb Raider II just right, while Lara was swimming, so that I had a perfect view of her (quite square) ass

The first time the dogs jumped through the hallway windows at me in the original Resident Evil. I literally threw the controller in sheer terror and sprinted into my room and under the covers.

Demo discs, demo discs, demo discs. These things were f**king gold to a poor kid like me, because they allowed me to play a whole slew of games without buying them.

Rage-quitting after the first outside guard in Metal Gear Solid tracked me through my footprints in the snow

And, most prominently: silent Hill. F**king silent f**king Hill. we got this in one of the magazines as a demo disc, and were quite puzzled on what it was, having played the first RE game previously. That year, holiday season, every single night (no exceptions) was spent with my family huddled around my father, who would take us on a trek through the quiet, disturbing town. we marveled at the voice quality, shrieked in terror at demon babies, and never looked at ordinary radios the same again. Eventually we got the game on release day, and finished our journey. to this day, that is the single scariest piece of media for me.

On My Own: Playstation 2

After my sister and I constantly hogged the first Playstation, my parents began to lose interest. Their turns on the console simply never came! so when the Playstation 2 came around, my father refused to purchase it, something to the effect of “What good is it to me? I’m never going to get to play it.” I got a job at 16, first thing, and saved up a couple of paychecks to buy the machine, after one of my friends brought his over for a sleepover and I got to experience the wondrous graphics and sound, and sweet-ass controller.

My first headshot in GTA III; my friend’s mother gasped in shock at the awkward fountain of neck-blood and banned the game in his house

Metal Gear Solid 2, the first game I played on the PS2, which I spent 24 straight hours playing. That’s when I first noticed Kojima’s love of long cutscenes; I remember playing for a bit, initiating a movie, and then waking up an hour later with Raiden just chilling on the screen, waiting for my input.

Discovering backwards compatibility and replaying all of my old PSX games

Living through the most epic, emotional journey I had ever experienced to that point: the tragic love story of Final Fantasy X. The real tragedy, however, is how much damn time I spent playing Blitzball; I think I clocked in about 75-80 hours of just that, bringing my endgame file to about 150 hours total.

Gamestop: Bridging the Gap

At 18, right after graduating high school, I began to work full-time, and to show extreme interest in working at Gamestop (back when they were still about the gamers, instead of the corporate facets of sales). I showed up every day after a shift to bug the manager or assistant manager, and eventually scored an interview. The interview itself is rather amusing, and I beat out 10 other candidates simply by answering a particular question:

Manager: “If a little girl came in while you were working and asked to buy a hammer, to hang up her NSync poster with, how would you respond?”

The other ten people: “I would do my best to showcase the features of the hammer, what kind of cool things you can do with it, and get her to buy a pack of nails to add on to the total sale!”

Me: “Um… little girl… where are your parents at?”

At the time, the ESRB had been cracking down (Hot Coffee was still a thing) and my answer was the only one that focused on the customer herself, rather than the sale. anyways, I got the job and began the coolest work experience of my life, being able to steer wayward customers away from “Bad Boys: Miami Takedown” and over to GTA; meeting other people like me for the first time in my life; dominating in sales, finding out just how well I could pitch various games to customers; and best of all, being able to try every single game I that was in the store! I was still a PS2 junkie, so I didn’t own an Xbox until after its life-cycle had ended, but I was all about the various handhelds. I had every single variant of GBA, PSP, and DS that you could imagine, because if someone traded a unique one in, I would swoop in and use my Emp Discount to grab it off of the shelf.

Working at Gamestop opened my eyes to the wide range of games and systems available up until that point, and to sit here and list them all would simply be WAY too long, so again: favorite moments!

The frickin’ Gamecube! Such an underrated system: Wind Waker? Check. MGS: Twin Snakes? Check. RE4? come on, I have the damn tattoo on my chest.

The advent of the Guitar Hero series during holiday season ’05, I want to say. every single party I went to in ’06 had these games, and my buddy and I rocked everyone’s cocks (sorry, “socks”) off.

My discovery (and stupidity) concerning the Kingdom Hearts series. I was one of those naysayers who dismissed the game because of its initially cartoony appearance. After KHII was announced, I decided to see what the hype was all about, and rented the first one- biggest facepalm ever. I was hooked.

Finally getting an Xbox and losing years (seemingly) of my life to Knights of the old Republic, Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, and Mercenaries: Total Destruction

From then Til Now: 360 and Beyond

I am one of those (not so) cool kids who can say that I helped launch the 360, but was also able to witness the skepticism of the general public; our store had a grand total of 11 people pick up the system at midnight on launch day (two of those being employees). I still wasn’t behind Microsoft, seeing as how I had never bought a launch system before due to financial problems and still couldn’t afford to at that point in time. My awesome roommate picked one up though, and we spent many a night driving through the streets of Stilwater in Saints Row, riding bareback (sorry, that’s “horseback”) in Gun, and taking over the city as a member of the Corleone Family in The Godfather. I wasn’t too impressed with the titles available at launch and soon after, mostly because I was jealous of the other people who could afford them. I stuck with my last-gen systems, which were still putting out amazing material (The God of War series, the criminally underrated Final Fantasy XII, etc), until I joined the Army in 2008. After getting stationed in Korea and getting my bonus, I decided that I finally had enough money at one time to buy the 360, as I had been hyped about much of the content being put out. My first games were Bioshock and TES IV: Oblivion, and let me tell you: I had never been so completely obsessed with a game in my life as I was with Oblivion.

The abnormal amount of Xbox’s I went thru. Nope, I never got a single Red-Ring or disc error, I was just always broke as hell and needed food. Buying and selling 360′s was my forte in the army, along with shooting and killing, decontamination ops, and PT.

Did I mention how captivated I was by Oblivion? Sorry, go ahead and multiply that by ten- that’s called my Fallout 3 phase.

Sneaking away from slow days in the motorpool back into my barracks room to throw on some Bioshock or GTA IV

You all know this one… the virally-addicting “Blurp!” of an achievement unlocked. along with this, the anger that accompanies the event of a friend logging in to Live, fooling you into thinking you actually accomplished something.

And hundreds of others…

*Note: I’ve never been a PS3 guy. I bought the machine solely to play MGS4, and never played a single other game on it. I sold it after several months of nothing but Math Teacher Snake, and haven’t looked back since.

Non-Console Generation

I had to sell my last 360 (for the 20th time, at least) in order to make the trip from my last duty station back to my home. I had to sell my entire Guitar Hero band kit (including double-pedal drums, 4 guitars, and 2 mics) because of the lack of space in the rental car I used. My PS2 got damaged on the 24 hour drive back home.

I have been without console for one year, coming this Wednesday, the 22nd of February.

I started substituting for games on my old HP laptop, a ruddy things with a 17 inch screen but almost no RAM or VRAM to speak of (the graphics card had the word “family” in it- FAIL). The only thing I played for the first month at home was Star Wars Galaxies, an old favorite that I had invested a lot of time and money into (credits don’t come cheap, hombre) and had built a foundation in, with a great guild. The severe lag during heroics got me thinking, however, so I began to contemplate how to go about fixing that.

After receiving my final check from the Army, a whopping 2,000 dollars, I knew what I had to do.

Ebay came through for me that day, when I located a refurbished Asus: Republic of Gamers G71GX laptop. The specs were amazing for the price that I paid ($700 for a $2000 dollar laptop) and it shipped right away.

To this day, I still use the laptop as if it were a desktop. Without having to exchange parts, upgrade RAM, or overhaul the OS, this baby can run Skyrim on “Ultra” settings, with HD graphics mods installed! I have the bad boy hooked up to a 42 inch monitor, with a heatsink keyboard and BlueTooth mouse, complete with a sweet surround-sound rig.

I only play PC now, at first starting out with various F2P MMO’s (Wizard101, Runes of Magic, Maple Story) because of my great anticipation for Skryim and The old Republic, two games I had been waiting for, for years- and finally had the means to play.

These days, those are literally the only two games I play. Skyrim is so vast and open that I have all kinds of adventures and experiences, from moments of terror, lurking in the dark with the soft sound of footsteps behind me, to hilarious moments during Daedric missions.

The old Republic, however, is my shit.

The amount that I love TOR is unholy, unheard of, and unseen. This game is the endgame for me as a hardcore Star Wars fan. Japan could blow up right now, along with every Rockstar and Bethesda studio in the world, and I would be content to play only this until I die (provided that Bioware Austin is untouched).

The Future?

What ever happened to virtual reality? Is it just too expensive right now? I can’t wait for the day when I’m so physically immersed in a game as to actually become a character in another world. Screw that stupid Kinect, someone needs to be working on this- now.

I can’t say what else is in store for us gamers in the future, except for the predictable franchises like Call of Duty making another 23 games, Pokemon adding about 600 new monsters to the Pokedex before I hit age 30, and World of Warcraft to introduce their new expansion: “Koala Avalanche of Mighty Destruction.” I can say that as long as developers put out fresh material with emotional, thought-provoking concepts, and learn to stop yanking us around my the chin (looking at you, Activision) then I’ll be satisfied until I die, or at least until December 21st this year.

Thanks to everyone who bothered to even read this anyone who actually read it and got this far, and anyone who feels like contributing an opinion of some sort. Oh, and thanks to you all simply for being gamers- if I was the only one in the world, it wouldn’t have existed in the first place. With our combined love, we will see the downfall of the movie theater and the Resurrection of the Arcade!

The IEEE Applied Power Electronics Conference and Exposition (APEC) used to be a quiet event—at least, that’s what I have heard from old-timers—but that is no longer the case. almost every vendor who is in the power-related IC or discrete market is there, whether exhibiting, presenting, or just checking things out.

While I am not there, EDN contributing editor Steve Taranovich is sending regular updates. Here’s his latest:

•Vicor’s Picor division can do custom modules to customer requests in 140 days

•Picor semiconductor power chips: Quiet power (active EMI filter chip) and Cool-power (using Zero-voltage switching technology) and Cool-swap (hot swap with true SOA [safe operating area] and glitch-catching capability), thus eliminating big external components. these solutions are rounding out their power-management offerings.

•Intersil is highlighting their digital-power solutions with the new ZL6105 controller with auto-compensation for stable operation, and ZL9117M digital DC/DC at 17A, making a small, accurate power supply as good as many bench-top supplies. also,  the Power Navigator GUI and software by their Zilker Labs team with feature updates like auto-compensation using ZL6105 are making news at the show.

•Even CUI is showing this software—more on CUI coming up.

•DC/DC converters and MOSFETs are the hot items among suppliers at APEC. This year there were 800 papers submitted with 400 being accepted, and 15 to 20% of these were about DC/DC converter technology. As for MOSFET’s, I found that there were a great many new and innovative solutions, process improvements, enhanced specifications and broadened portfolio choices.

EDN’s Margery Conner included some of his first updates in her blog Notes from APEC: SiC diodes quals; New GaN drivers; STMicro/3Sun, including how STMicro’s partnership with 3Sun is giving it the edge in solar power conversion and management. Steve will have lots more to report over the next few days. Stay tuned!

Inventors have come up with increasingly annoying alarm clocks designed to get even the heaviest sleeper out of bed. the Ramos clock on Kickstarter may have them all beat.

The LED Ramos clock will force you out of bed in the morning.

(Credit:Paul Sammut)

Let’s review some of the most obnoxious alarm clocks to ever grace our nightstands. Clocky is an alarm with wheels that runs away from you. Tocky rolls around. the Defusable Clock requires cutting the right wire to subdue the alarm.

The Ramos clock on Kickstarter is also into defusion, but you’re going to have to crawl out of your warm bed, locate the wireless control panel, and punch in a series of numbers that changes every day.

The disarm panel can be set to require the day’s date or a set of random digits displayed by the clock. You could end up groggily standing in your kitchen in your nightie, trying to remember what day it is. It’s effective, but oh-so-cruel.

A $160 pledge gets you an LED version of the clock with a birch housing. the real star of the project is the Nixie Ramos. It replaces the LEDs with out-of-production Soviet Union tubes that make it look like a prop from a 1960s sci-fi film. the Nixie costs $350.

I would caution Ramos buyers with roommates or spouses. All it would take is one prankster hiding your disarm panel to leave your ears ringing all morning.