If Nikon thought its 36-megapixel D800 would be the king of the resolutions this week, they were wrong. Sigma, it seems, didn’t get the memo and has crashed the party, updating its DP1 and DP2 compacts with whopping 46-megapixel sensors. Okay, so technically it’s three 15.3 megapixel layers (that also being the effective resolution), but we’ll play along with the marketing spin. Rebranded as the DP1- and DP2-Merrill in honor of the sensor’s co-creator, the refresh sees the compacts sporting the same imaging innards as the firm’s flagship SD1 Merrill SLR. The LCD screen also gets a bump from 2.5 to three inches, which, we suppose, is to do better justice to those massive pictures you’ll be taking. Sigma’s keeping price and availability under wraps for now, but we’ll keep snooping around for more info.

Scientists at Stanford are hard at work trying to improve the efficiency and durability of solar panels — two key factors that have kept the Sun from becoming a more popular source of energy. Their latest effort involves nanocrystalline-silicon, a material that has proven resilient and highly conductive, but not very good at absorbing light. Their solution, nanoshells — hollowed out spheres of silicon that trap and recirculate light much like a whispering gallery does sound. Balls of the crystalline material are dipped in silicon, then hydrofluoric acid is used to eat way the center of the sphere, leaving a path for light to enter. The shells trap the light, allowing more of it to be absorbed, and also reduce the effect of non-optimal angles on energy production. Hit up the source for a few more details.

SOURCE via Stanford University

Details are still fairly light at the moment, but The Wall Street Journal is reporting today that Google could be about to make big push into the hardware business. Citing people briefed on the company’s plans, the WSJ says that Google is now developing a home entertainment system that would stream music wirelessly throughout the home (including to web-connected devices and “Google-made speakers”), and be able to be controlled using a smartphone or tablet — making it sound a whole lot like a Sonos competitor. What’s more, unlike current Android and Google TV devices, this system will reportedly be marketed under Google’s own brand.

SOURCE via Wall Street Journal

We’ve been getting some mixed signals about Windows 8 for ARM-based devices as of late, but Microsoft’s Steven Sinofsky has now returned with another of his exhaustive Building Windows 8 blog posts and cleared up some of the confusion. The short of it is that Windows for ARM promises to offer the same out of the box experience as the x86 edition of Windows 8.

This includes the full Windows desktop (complete with File Explorer and the like), and the same desktop Office applications including Word, Excel and PowerPoint (but only Office applications, it seems). So-called Metro-style apps from the Windows Store will also be able to support both Windows on ARM and Windows for x86/64, and you can expect hardware-accelerated HTML5 support with Internet Explorer 10.

What’s more, Sinofsky also notes that PC manufacturers are now working on devices designed specifically for WOA (or Windows on ARM), and that their “collective goal” is for them to ship at the same time as PCs designed for the x86 edition of Windows 8. While details on those devices remain light, Sinofksy did offer a new peek at one of the devices Microsoft used during the initial development of Windows for ARM when ARM-based tablets were hard to come by: an early Windows Phone. You can see it running the full desktop environment after the break (along with a video overview of WOA itself), but Sinofsky emphasizes that it is “not a product plan or even a hint at a product.” Plenty more details can also be found at the source link below, though you may want to prepare a cup of coffee before diving into that wall of text.

SOURCE via Microsoft

Google’s got a pretty massive portfolio of products. The company does everything from phones to operating systems, but there isn’t yet a Google store where you can go to purchase Google goods. The company opened an online phone store when the Nexus One initially launch, but that didn’t last too long. Google announcing the decision to only sell via third-party retail channels in May of 2010 and received its last shipment of Nexus Ones in July of that year. However, late last year the company opened up a pop-up store in London and it seems it might be thinking of a permanent location for Dublin.

The latest rumors have Google opening a physical store in Dublin, Ireland. The reports stem from Google Dublin, the company’s European Headquarters, which recently filed a local planning application for a store in its HQ. The store would be 1,323 square feet, open to the public and would sell Google merchandise. The filing also details plans for a landscaped garden, swimming pool, gym and restaurant for the building, which Google acquired in April of last year. Bloomberg reports that Google yesterday declined to comment on its plans for retail locations except to say that it was an option.

“While we do have the option to open retail space, we are examining all potential uses,” the search giant told Bloomberg in an emailed statement. “No final decision has been taken.”

Late last year, Google opened up mini-stores inside the PC World and Currys on Tottenham Court Road, in London. Dubbed Chrome Zones, the stores focused on the Chrome Notebook line and offered people the opportunity to try out the laptops, previously only available to buy online, in person. Google said at the time that the company thought it important to let people play with the device before buying it.

“We found anecdotally that when people tried the device and played with it, that made a huge difference to their understanding of what the Chromebook is all about.” Google’s Arvind Desikan said at the time. “People will be able to go in and have a play with the devices. We want to see whether people understand what this device is all about and monitor their reaction when they try it out.”

Taking that statement into consideration, it seems likely that Google will open more stores. When the UK’s Chrome Zones opened, Google said it had more pilot stores planned for around the world, but the did not mention if these plans involve any bigger, stand-alone stores. We can understand Google’s reluctance to enter the retail world in a big way — renting a space, remodeling, and hiring staff is definitely costly. So it would certainly make sense to stick to the ‘shop-within-a-shop’ style of retail store, at least for now. Then again, opening one in your own HQ solves that problem too.

AMD has released its new entry-level V3900 professional graphics card, which replaces the V3800. The V3900 is priced at $119, which puts it directly up against the Nvidia’s Quadro 400. It sits roughly $50 less than the Nvidia’s Quadro 600 and $20 more than the V3800.

From the specifications, V3900 looks to be a nice update to the V3800 and is basically the business version of the Radeon HD 6570 DDR3. The V3900 has double the memory at 1GB and is based on the “Turks” GPU. The card’s 128-bit DDR3 memory gives it 28.8GB/s of memory bandwidth compared to the V3800, which had a 64-bit interface providing half the bandwidth at 14.4GB/s. It supports the latest versions of OpenGL and OpenCL (4.2 and 1.1, respectively). Based on various test conducted by AMD, the card shows performance increases over both the V3800 and Quadro 400.

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We’re all pretty eager for Apple to announce the iPad 3, if only to put a stop to the rumors and leaks that we’ve been hearing since the launch of iPad 2. That said, now that we’re apparently getting close to the actual unveiling of the device, the rumors are getting pretty juicy. The latest comes courtesy of Repair-Labs, 9to5Mac and Apple.pro. 9to5Mac claims that there are iPad 3 shells ‘floating around China,’ where the devices are manufactured, and all three sites have obtained their own photos of the casings.

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