Obesity in children has become an increasingly apparent concern over here in the United States. That’s probably because we don’t have one of these pedal-powered school buses taking our kids to school. Made by the Netharlands’ De Cafe Racer, this child-powered vehicle brings an eco-friendly approach to encouraging kids to exercise. The teacher simply has to steer in the right direction while all of the children wear their sugar-filled hyperactive bodies out.

Okay, maybe this bike-bus thing isn’t a school bus after all, but it does come in that iconic yellow color! Rather than a transport vehicle for school kids, this vehicle is actually a rental that can be used for a day of fun. But a bright idea such as this one could definitely be worthy of some attention here in the U.S. or other areas with notable obesity.

Market research firm IHS said that Apple’s iCloud offer may prompt consumers to reconsider their need for more flash memory and decrease the growth of demand over time.

Apple currently buys about 30 percent of all Flash memory currently produced, about 5.2 billion gigabytes of a total of 18.5 billion gigabytes. By 2015, IHS believes Apple’s share will be down to about 23.9 percent.

“Apple has contributed greatly to the growth of the NAND business in recent years,” said Dee Nguyen, memory analyst at IHS. “However, the company’s adoption of cloud storage could have significant implications because the fastest-growing segment of the NAND flash market lies in the storage component of convergent mobile devices like smartphones and tablets. And with Apple products like the iPhone and iPad accounting for a disproportionate share of NAND flash demand, any move among Apple users to offload storage to the company’s iCloud service could mean a corresponding decrease in demand for physical NAND flash memory in the future.”

So, is this good news or bad news for Apple’s rivals? They may be able to get easier access to flash memory, but they will also be following a cloud trend and align their devices with Google, Amazon or other cloud services. The question is when and if consumers will adopt cloud services. IHS said that Apple’s promise to store up to 25,000 songs per user free of charge, translating to about 100 GB of storage. However, cloud storage is not as attractive yet, as it requires a fast and permanent connection as well as better security features to carry high value.

For now, IHS believes, the impact of the iCloud on flash memory demand will remain low. “The most likely scenario for the time being is an increase in overall demand for NAND storage – cloud or local- with users continuing to utilize the physical storage on their personal devices,” the company said. But there is the clear picture that a ton of local storage in all our devices may not be so important in the future.

A report from Pocket-lint suggests that the Ultraviolet movie format is close to officially going commercial. For consumers, this means that for every Blu-ray and DVD they’ve purchased over the years, they’ll also unlock a cloud-stored digital version that can be streamed on up to 12 registered Ultraviolet devices. All they need is the UPC symbol in order to register their movie.

But for those who don’t want to purchase discs, there are plans to introduce a pay model that simply offers the rights to the digital Ultraviolet version. However both models are reportedly backed by all but one of the studios, almost every major consumer electronics manufacturer, several major retailers, and over 70 other technology companies. Read more…

The jump in system requirements going from Windows XP to Windows Vista was significant. The move from Windows 7 to Windows Vista, however, wasn’t anything of the sort. In fact, Windows 7 ran better than Windows Vista on modest systems.

Even though Windows 8 isn’t set for release until 2012 at the soonest, Microsoft is targeting a similar set of minimum system requirements as the ones for Windows 7. By extension, this would mean that Windows 8 will have similar hardware requirements as Windows Vista – an operating system that could predate Windows 8 by three years.

Speaking at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference in California, Window’s corporate vice-president Tami Reller said, “In both of our Windows 8 previews, we talked about continuing on with the important trend that we started with Windows 7, keeping system requirements either flat or reducing them over time.”

“Windows 8 will be able to run on a wide range of machines because it will have the same requirements or lower,” she added.

“We’ve also built intelligence into Windows 8 so that it can adapt to the user experience based on the hardware of the user. So, whether you’re upgrading an existing PC, or buying a new one, Windows will adapt to make the most of that hardware,” added Reller.

System requirements for Windows 7 are:

• 1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor
• 1 gigabyte (GB) RAM (32-bit) or 2 GB RAM (64-bit)
• 16 GB available hard disk space (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit)
• DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver

SOURCE via PC Advisor

Friday ASRock said that it teamed up with Johnathan ‘Fatal1ty’ Wendel to create the first AMD-based gaming motherboard, the Fatal1ty 990FX Professional, featuring support for the AM3+ socket, 8-core CPUs and AMD’s 990FX chipset. The board also sports premium gold caps and enables AMD Quad CrossFireX, 3-Way CrossFireX and CrossFireX as well as Nvidia Quad SLI and SLI.

“I wanted a motherboard for AMD CPUs with the same successful features as our award winning, Intel based Fatal1ty P67 Professional” Wendel said. “In addition, ASRock has come up with some new technologies that excited me, such as the XFast LAN which can reduce the latency of on-line games, and allows gamers to play at their highest level and Frag the competition!”

According to ASRock, the premium board uses a Digital PWM design that delivers Vcore voltage to the processor more efficiently than standard motherboards. Coupled with V12+2 phase power, users are assured the most stable overclocking possible. The board also allows gamers to customize their mouse polling rate thanks to the Fatal1ty Mouse Port, offering an adjustable range between 125 Hz and 1000 Hz. Read more…

The iPhone 3G and 3GS had 3G radio technology, so that means that the iPhone 4 must have 4G, right? No, that’s just dead wrong – but that doesn’t stop at least one-third of iPhone 4 users from thinking that.

Retrevo conducted a survey on 4G phone adoption, and asked consumers if they were planning on buying a 4G phone this year. 34 percent of iPhone owners believed that they already had one. Ignorant ifags, as always.

While that may paint Apple users in a bit of an uninformed light, Android users were not far behind, of which 29 percent questioned also believed that they had a 4G phone. Of course, some of them may actually be right, if they own a HTC Evo 4G or Samsung Infuse 4G. Last I heard, the Motorola Atrix 4G are also called 4G, for the HSPA+. Again, the argument. Then again, you don’t really need to be a tech head to own a smartphone, as most of them just buy a smartphone to play Angry Birds and Facebook anyway.

BlackBerry users were a little savvier; with only 24 percent thinking that they already had a 4G phone. Not surprised, as most of them wear black suits with red tie.

For those who said no to an upgrade to 4G, the largest reason, given by 30 percent of respondents, was that the data plan costs too much. 22 percent felt that 4G performance wasn’t worth the cost, and 19 percent admitted that they didn’t know enough about 4G.

Given that Windows is Microsoft’s biggest product, we think that Windows 8 will be a pretty important product for the company. CEO Steve Ballmer agrees.

Speaking at the Imagine Cup in New York City last week, Ballmer spoke briefly about Windows 8. Some parts of his speech are clipped below:

As we take a look over the next several years, we’re certainly excited about what we’re doing, just like you all came together into project teams and did exciting work and you got excited about it, that’s kind of what we get to do every day at Microsoft. Hey, what’s Windows 8? How do we drive it? What do we make happen? What are the key phenomena? When do we get to release it? How do we make it better, and better and better? Yes, there are some other guys we compete with. Boom we’ve got to do better, and better, and better, and better, and better. It’s pretty exciting, pretty exciting stuff.

…

There’s at least another 30, 40, or 50 years of great opportunity in the information technology world. And whether you consider yourself a businessperson looking at technology, or a technology person looking at technology, the opportunities for you are really going to be pretty fantastic. There’s a lot coming in our own case I think the news, the things that we have to talk to you as a group of technologists over the next few months, Windows 8 will be pretty important. You’ll hear more about that at our developer conference Build in September.

SOURCE via Microsoft