Sony 4K TV coming to Australia in December

It was announced today that Sony's 84 inch TV with 4000 pixels is finally coming to Australia. The actual resolution of this 4K TV is 3,840 x 2,160 compared to 1,920 x 1,080 on most TVs today commonly known as 1080p. People are still questioning whether there are enough 4K contents available for us to spend that much money on a TV. It's nice to see how the technology is evolving, from LCD TVs to OLED TV and now the 4K TV. It's funny tho, because Sony wasn't able to come through with the OLED TV alone. As for the TV, I personally don't like the stand but the body design looks pretty nice.

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Samsung Galaxy Note 2 specs leaked

Samsung's Galaxy Note 2, or what I like to call it Galaxy S3 with better design, is quite stunning. Like most new phones coming out now, it's running on 1.4GHz quad core processor and pretty much have the same specs as the Galaxy S3. However, the Note 2 will hold 5.5 inch screen which is .2 inch bigger than the original Galaxy Note.

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Motorola RAZR M 4G LTE

With the recent announcement of the LG's Optimus G, it seems like the competitors are feeling pressured to win the LTE smart phone battles. This quad core Motorola phone has a 4.3 inch qHD super AMOLED display and it will run on Snapdragon S4 processor, 1GB RAM and a 8MP camera that can take 1080p videos. I personally don't like the design on this phone and the fact that it's a Motorola doesn't seem that reliable. It seems like there are quite a few new phones coming out like I mentioned in the previous post so I'm just gonna wait and see.

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Quad Core phones about to get dominated

LG recently released a teaser of their latest quad core phone, Optimus G, and the specs are quite intimidating. The 1.5GHz quad-core Snapdragon S4, the 2GB of RAM, the 4.7-inch IPS display, Android 4.0.4 and 13-megapixel camera. The screen resolution was also announced to be 1,280 x 768 but there's a high chance that all these specs may change because these are still in pre-production stage and the design is going to change as well. If any of you guys reading this are in the market for a new phone, I'd suggest you wait since there are few new phones coming out with really good specs.

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OLED TV, Samsung or LG?

OLED TV, the latest technology in TV industry, is being talked about more frequently as they are coming closer to the release. In this post, I'd like to talk a little bit about what we can expect and what options we have. If you didn't know, there are currently Samsung and LG making the OLED displays and it could be highly debatable which one is better (if you're fortunate enough, that is).

First off, the main difference between LG and Samsung in their OLED TV is that LG uses IGZO WOLED technology and Samsung uses LTPS RGB OLED. The production cost for the Samsung's OLED is 25% higher than LG's. This definitely will have an impact on pricing of the product. Another thing you should consider is the awards. LG received the best product award at CES 2012 in Las Vegas and also claimed that their OLED technology is at least two years ahead of their competitors. This may not be an advantage that keeps a company going for a long time but at least you will know which one will be more likely to succeed with the first generation of the technology.

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Build a house in 20 hours with a 3D printer

The recently developed technology called 3D printer has surprised us with many tangible items like pen holders,  iPhone cases, and even guns that can actually shoot. You think gun is big? Imagine a whole house. The idea of making a house with a 3D printer was initiated by Professor Behrock Khoshnevis and they tested that it can be done in 20 hours. He got this idea from his perspective on ghetto villages that have poorly constructed make shift corrugated iron shack and believes having a better shelter will improve the society.

The houses built using a 3D printer will cost 25% less than traditional houses and will reduce the labour costs at the same time. It uses a mixture of concrete and fibre polymers making it much more stronger than the materials used in most houses today. If your current house can handle 3,000 pounds per square inch of pressure, the houses made with this 3D printer will be able to handle 10,000. Also, the fact that a house can be built in 20 hours is another great factor to consider. Professor Behrock Khoshnevis did mention that you can design a house however you want with this 3D printing technology. You can have those dream house you wanted from when you were a kid (slides coming down from your room to the kitchen or a mysterious house with like trap doors to pull a prank on your friends).

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Demonoid shut down and owners under investigation

Demonoid is one of the biggest torrent sites in the world where people can download pirated copyright materials for free. Their primary ISP was located in Ukraine although they did change their location quite frequently. The server was shut down by DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) on July 25 and the Ukraine officials are making sure no one can use this site. Demonoid was the 538th most visited website and had about 3 million peers. My gut tells me that the world of torrents is slowly coming to an end with this incident as a start.

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Watch out for Active 3D

Samsung recently issued a warning on 3D TVs that it may cause seizures or some sort of medical problems from their 3D TVs. Samsung didn't mention this but from reading the warnings, you can easily tell that this is a warning for all active 3D TVs. They stated that the following problems are caused due to the flickering technique used in active 3D glasses. Also, if there is a history of epilepsy or stroke in your family, it is not advisable to use this particular technology. Some other symptoms that show active 3D is not for you include:

• epileptic seizure or stroke
• altered vision
• lightheadedness
• dizziness
• involuntary movements like twitching
• confusion
• nausea
• loss of awareness
• convulsions
• cramps
• disorientation

If you see any of these symptoms, you should immediately stop viewing your 3D TV and seek medical specialist. Due to lack of research and studies, they are unsure of how common these problems are but until a study is done, it is highly advisable to choose a different type of technology when viewing 3D TV. The technology used in the movie Avatar which was a polarized glasses, commonly known as passive 3D, is more recommended at the moment.

Active 3D TV: Samsung, Sony, Panasonic
Passive 3D TV: LG, Vizio, Toshiba, Panasonic.

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LG 3D Smart TV Dual Play demonstrated

I just saw an interesting video that demonstrates the new feature on LG's 3D smart TV called Dual Play. Pretty much it's a feature that lets you and your "opponent" view each of your own full screen when splitting screen. I find this feature quite intriguing as it's an advanced technology that will take gaming to next level. I wish I had this when I was a kid, maybe I could have maintained a better relationship with my brother..


If you see in the video, it shows you the special type of glasses used for dual play mode. I found out that you can easily make those with your passive 3D glasses from LG. All you really have to do is just grab 2 3D glasses and put all the left lens on one glasses and all the right lens on the other. It turns out, the dual play mode works by displaying different set of lines to each player without interlacing them in each glasses.

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NASA's Curiosity rover landing in Mars today

The Curiosity rover is part of the robotic mission called Mars Science Laboratory that was launched by NASA on November 26, 2011 and it's landing in Gale Crater at about 05:31 UTC on August 6, 2012. They have showed concept videos and computer simulations of this mission but now we'll be able to see it for real. The Curiosity rover cost about $2.5 billion and it's been traveling in space for eight months. If it lands successfully, it'll open up a a lot more information on how it's like in the planet Mars. It'll help us learn about Mars' habitability, climate and geology.

If you want to watch the landing live, you can head over to the link below once the time comes and enjoy the clip.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/08/watch-live-curiosity/

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Nixeus and its 27 inch hi-res monitor

I know a lot of people haven't even heard about Nixeus and I honestly haven't either, until I read an article about this monitor. I looked at its specs and it's actually quite impressive. The 2560 x 1440 WQHD resolution with LG S-IPS panel, 6ms response, 8-bit colour, stereo speakers and all the ports we need for just $US430. I'm quite skeptical about its price because the specs look too good to be that cheap but I guess we'll have to wait until August 21 because that's when it's going to be released.

One thing I noticed, tho, was that it seems like everybody's using LG's panels on their displays now. I heard even LG's biggest competitor, Samsung, gets their supplies for TV from LG. I know there's a lot more than just the panel when it comes to displays but they now must have a pretty high reputation especially since they started building bigger displays like the 84 inch 4K TVs.

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Dick Smith DVD player blown up in front of a kid

Last week, something horrible happened to the Lyons family while traveling to Rochester, Victoria. Heath Lyons was driving with his daughter Ava in the car when Heath smelt something burning. He thought it was the engine so he pulled the car over and got out to check what it was then he heard an explosion in the car. It turns out, the portable DVD player that his daughter was using exploded, setting fire on Ava's clothes and burning her right and, cheeks, lips, nose, eyelids and eyebrows. She was taken to the Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne and she's recovering pretty well.


The actual cause of the explosion is still being investigated with the product manufacturer but from what we know as of now, it was the battery that overheated and blew up. Currently, Dick Smith discontinued this product and they are offering recalls. For your reference, this model was Dick Smith 9" Portable DVD/Media Player, Catalogue number D6202. If anyone reading this has this product, it's highly advisable that you take it to Dick Smith immediately to prevent anymore incidents.

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Linux thinks NVIDIA sucks, Valve disagrees

Linus Torvalds, software engineer and hacker who pretty much developed Linux, considers NVIDIA as the worst because NVIDIA doesn't support Linux well even though high number of NVIDIA chips are being used in Android mobile devices which have Linux in them. However; Valve, a company that has been working on improvements regarding this matter, disagree with Torvalds' remark. Valve works with Linux, along with AMD and Intel, and they have a great amount of interest in this subject as Steam's Left 4 Dead 2 release is nearing.

Developers are trying their best to work things out since the game supports Linux OS and there's a potential in providing the best gaming experience with Linux OS. Valve claims that Ubuntu draws better performance than GeForce GTX 680 on Windows 7 when playing its co-op zombie shooter games. There were also great improvements in Linux with their fps as the Open GL Linux now can hit 315fps compared to 6fps on their first version. As Linux is becoming more suitable for gaming, there's a possibility that Linux will become mainstream and Torvalds will be very sorry.

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