Leaving the confines of a Manhattan apartment, Lincoln Center has the uncanny ability to make one feel dwarfed. Home to the performing arts and haunt to New York City’s glitterati, the landmark received the IBM makeover as part of the company’s THINK exhibit — an interactive installation designed to weave the story of technology as it applies to the fabric of life, achievement and change.

The first thing that catches the eye is IBM’s sparkling 123-foot long, 12-foot high LCD wall lining a tunnel leading into the bowels of the NYC landmark. The “living” wall thrives off the surrounding environment, visualizing traffic patterns and analyzing corresponding air quality from nearby Broadway. It also shows the solar potential of every rooftop in the city, financial transactions and the amount of water leaking from the main aqueduct. As the event’s producer Lee Green simply put it, the idea behind the set up is to “delegate understanding” to “intrigue and inspire” even the least technologically-inclined.

Continue reading IBM’s THINK Exhibit invades NYC, aims to inspire (video)

IBM’s THINK Exhibit invades NYC, aims to inspire (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 30 Sep 2011 14:47:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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VisionTek and Bigfoot Networks have just announced the VisionTek Killer HD 5770, which combines the high 3D performance of an AMD 5770 graphics processor (GPU) to Bigfoot’s E2100 network processor. If you are interested in 3D games, you probably already know the AMD HD 5770, which is a mid-range GPU that can run any modern game very decently. The BigFoot networks E2100 might be a little more obscure, but it’s basically a network controller that processes network data with minimal intervention from the main processor (CPU) and the operating system (OS). The Bigfoot E2100 should produce lower latency (we’re talking about going from 5ms to 3ms or so…). All of this leads to increase in performance, either measured in latency (ms) or FPS (frames per second). If you are looking for an absolute edge in online gaming, you might want to check this out. More info at VisionTek.

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VisionTek Killer HD 5770: fast graphics and low-latency networking

Lawyers for Sony Computer Entertainment America must have been mighty busy last October, hatching the wild scheme that came to light this week — a series of eight intertwining patent applications all describing a single device with an intriguing touchscreen interface. Though it’s hard to tell what form the final device might take — the apps suggest sliders, clamshells and slates — a few distinct ideas bubble to the surface, and we’ll knock them out one by one. First, the inventors seem to be rather particular about having a touchpad that’s separate from the main screen — perhaps even on its back like the rumored PSP2 — and Sony’s trying to patent a way to manipulate objects through the screen as well. Second, there’s a lot of mumbo-jumbo about being able to “enhance” or “transform” the user interface in response to different forms of input, which seems to boil down to this: Sony’s trying to get some multitouch up in there, especially pinch-to-zoom.

Last but not least, the company’s looking to cordon off a section of touchscreen buttons, including a ‘paste’ command, and patent a “prediction engine” that would dynamically change the onscreen layout based on your past behavior. If most of these ideas sound more at home in a new tablet computer rather than a gaming handheld, then great minds think alike. Still, SCEA is Sony’s gaming division — forlorn Linux computing aside — so consider us stumped for now.

Sony fires barrage of touchscreen patent applications, only one points at new PSP originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 28 Nov 2010 21:55:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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