MotherBoard Buying Guide How To Buy ???

Motherboards specifications have gained sheer importance espeically in this age of high definition games and intense memory requiring operations with high data rate busses , high data transfer rates, high graphic cards busses , dual channel and DDR3 rams and the list goes on.

If you visit your local computer market , you may hear some of the below listed specifications while buying motherboard:

• It supports SATA 3.5Gb/s.
• It has PCI Express Slot.
• Builtin VGA of 384 (Plus) Memory.
• Supports DDR 2 and DDR 3 RAMs.
• Supports Core 2 Duo processors.
• 6 channel Built-in SoundCard.
• 1 Giga Lan Builtin .
• Built-in WiFi card

These above options may or may be not enough to check motherboard’s technological strength and many other aspects.

We may not be able to standardized motherboard selection process, but common factors that may come under consideration while purchasing a customized PC vary on the basis of needs and usage, for instance, computer gamer may require high GPU and latest video technology than any other aspects of the motherboard.

A common computer user may consider couple of points before purchasing computer motherboards:

• Motherboard Brands like Intel , Asus, AMD, Nvidia chipsets.
• CPU technology support and CPU Extended Speed Support.
• Video technology & Graphic Memory.
• Memory Controllers.
• Storage Technology.
• Peripherals
• Some Extra Add-ons like Memory card reader, E-Sata etc.

Motherboards brands:

Choosing motherboards while planning for customized pc is always been a difficult task to meet, because of the verastility it offers and technology that may be available by different brands in different names.

Visit different motherboard manufacturer websites and have complete research about the motherboard specifications and technology it is ready to offer and capable of. Most common brands that are being used may be Intel, Asus, VIA, Nvidia, MSI, Mercury and etc.

CPU technology support and CPU Extended Speed Support:

Metaphorically, technology is evolving day by day. Nowdays, choosing right CPU for matching your needs is a difficult decesion, because within same brand it varies alot in technology. Like Intel has to offer lot of variations in the same core series. But what should be considered while considering CPU may be :

• CPU Speed i.e. 3.2 Ghz
• CPU FSB (in simple Bus Speed) this may be available in the range of 533 Mhz to 1333 Mhz.
• CPU Cores like Single Core, Dual Core,Core 2 Duo, Core 2 Quad, iCore and in AMD it may be like AMD Athlons , AM2, AM2+ , etc.
• Internal GPU (Graphic Processing Unit) capability.

Video Technology& Graphic Memory:

If we only have look on intel, it has alot to offer in built-in video technology ranging from standard video quality to HD quality experience. Bultin Video technology is enough for usual multimedia and office operations. But for extreme video usage like high definition games and video editing softwares, you may need dedicated graphic controllers on the motherboard. Builtin graphic memory ranges from 64 mb to 384+ mb memory shared with your memory controller installed and it may affect the performance.

Memory Controllers:

Memory controllers have been evolved so much from SD-RAMs to DDR RAMS, DDR-2  and now DDR-3. All they have to offer is speed and high data tranfser rates. While purchasing motherboards, one should keep in mind about assessment of maximum memory installation support i.e. like motherboard may support 4GB all in all and kind of architecture like DDR 3 and some other termonolgies like dual channel support.

Storage Technology:

While choosing motherboard , storage technology support is also an important factor to consider, whereas storage technology has also been changed drastically in recent years, ATA, ATA 133, SATA , SATA 3.5GB/s eSATA .

Peripherals:

In most of the recent motherboards, PS2 Mouse and Keyboard ports have been removed and now it comes with as many as USB ports. But this would be an additional bonus if new motherboard is also capable of PS2 mouse and keyboard as sometimes it really helps alot.

• Builtin High definition sound cards with 6 to 8 channel supports are easily available in newly designed motherboards, but one should consider if it also supports SPDIF output.
• USB 2.0 ports are available in recent motherboards, but now days USB 3.0 is more trendy in the technology for high speed USB transfers. Check it out if it is available.
• Firewire port is an additional benefit , if it is available on the motherboard for high data transfers.
• DVI output for high multimedia interface.
• PCI Express Slot.
• Lanfor neworking support.

Extra Add-ons:

• Memory Card reader is an additional feature if it is available in the casing and supported by motherboard.
• eSATA port is also an additional feature for connecting eSATA directly to PC as removeable device.
• HDMI port for extreme visual experience.
• Wireless Lan for networking support.

Final Thought:

First assess your requirments based on your usage, if you are game lover than always go for dedicated (seperate) graphic card controllers, because shared graphic controllers may cause you issues in playing high graphic requiring games.

Whereas , customizing PC has lot of advantages over already designed PC but for availing these advantage one should know what to add and vice versa
.

Supercomputing on a cell phone waoooIts Nice...

New software that runs on a smart phone can approximate in seconds computations that would take a supercomputer hours. The software works for problems whose form is know but whose particulars aren't; slider bars allow users to set the values for which they want the problems solved. Image courtesy of David Knezevic and Dinh Bao Phuong Huynh.

Many engineering disciplines rely on supercomputers to simulate complicated physical phenomena — how cracks form in building materials, for instance, or fluids flow through irregular channels. Now, researchers in MIT’s Department of Mechanical Engineering have developed software that can perform such simulations on an ordinary smart phone. Although the current version of the software is for demonstration purposes, the work could lead to applications that let engineers perform complicated calculations in the field, and even to better control systems for vehicles or robotic systems.

The new software works in cases where the general form of a problem is known in advance, but not the particulars. For instance, says Phuong Huynh, a postdoc who worked on the project, a computer simulation of fluid flowaround an obstacle in a pipe could depend on a single parameter: the radius of the obstacle. But for a given value of the parameter, calculating the fluid flow could take an hour on a supercomputer with 500 processing units. The researchers’ new software can provide a very good approximation of the same calculation in a matter of seconds.

“This is a very relevant situation,” says David Knezevic, another postdoc in the department who helped lead the project. “Often in engineering contexts, you know a priori that your problem is parameterized, but you don’t know until you get into the field what parameters you’re interested in.”

Each new problem the researchers’ software is called upon to solve requires its own mathematical model. The models, however, take up very little space in memory: A cell phone could hold thousands of them. The software, which is available for download, comes preloaded with models for nine problems, including heat propagation in objects of several different shapes, fluid flow around a spherical obstacle, and the effects of forces applied to a cracked pillar. As the researchers develop models for new classes of problems, they post them on a server, from which they can be downloaded.

Advance work

But while the models are small, creating them is a complicated process that does in fact require a supercomputer. “We’re not trying to replace a supercomputer,” Knezevic says. “This is a model of computation that works in conjunction with supercomputing. And the supercomputer is indispensable.”

Knezevic, his fellow postdoc Phuong Huynh, Ford Professor of Engineering Anthony T. Patera, and John Peterson of the Texas Advanced Computer Center describe their approach in a forthcoming issue of the journalComputers and Fluids. Once they have identified a parameterized problem, they use a supercomputer to solve it for somewhere between 10 and 50 different sets of values. Those values, however, are carefully chosen to map out a large space of possible solutions to the problem. The model downloaded to a smart phone finds an approximate solution for a new set of parameters by reference to the precomputed solutions. 

The key to the system, Knezevic says, is the ability to quantify the degree of error in an approximation of a supercomputing calculation, a subject that Patera has been researching for almost a decade. As the researchers build a problem model, they select parameters that will successively minimize error, according to analytic techniques Patera helped developed. The calculation of error bounds is also a feature of the phone application itself. For each approximate solution of a parameterized problem, the app also displays the margin of error. The user can opt to trade speed of computation for a higher margin of error, but the app can generally get the error under 1 percent in less than a second.

Turning the tables

While the researchers’ software can calculate the behavior of a physical system on the basis of its parameters, it could prove even more useful by doing the opposite: calculating the parameters of a physical system on the basis of its behavior. Instead of, say, calculating fluid flow around an obstacle based on the obstacle’s size, the software could calculate the size of the obstacle based on measurements of the fluid flow at the end of a pipe. Ordinarily, that would require several different computations on a supercomputer, trying out several different sets of parameters. But if testing, say, 30 options on a supercomputer would take 30 hours, it might take 30 seconds on a phone. Indeed, the researchers have already developed a second application that calculates such “inverse problems.”

In the same way that a simulation of a physical system describes its behavior on the basis of parametric measurements, control systems, of the type that govern, say, automotive brake systems or autonomous robots, determine devices’ behavior on the basis of sensor measurements. Control-systems researchers spend a great deal of energy trying to come up with practical approximations of complex physics in order to make their systems responsive enough to work in real time. But Knezevic, Huynh and Patera’s approach could make those approximations both more accurate and easier to calculate.

Max Gunzberger, Frances Eppes Eminent Professor of Scientific Computing at Florida State University says that the MIT researchers’ work has a “cuteness aspect” that has already won it some attention. But “once you get over the cuteness factor,” he says, “if you talk about serious science or serious engineering, there’s a potential there.” Gunzberger points out that while the researchers’ demo concentrates on fluid mechanics, “there’s lots of other problems that their approach can be applied to. They built the structure that they themselves or others can start using to solve problems in different application areas.” 

PayPal hopes to make micropayments easier online

PayPal wants to make it easier to buy low-cost digital goods online, whether it's a single article on a news website or virtual items in a video game.

Scott Thompson, the online payment service's president, said Thursday thatPayPal plans to roll out a payment product by the end of the year that helps businesses collect "micropayments" on the Web.

Generally, if you want to buy, say, a virtual sword in an online game, you need to first purchase a chunk of credit - perhaps $5 or $10 - that you can then spend on a 49-cent virtual sword on a game on Facebook or other websites. That's because the costs associated with credit card transactions quickly eat away at the profit a merchant would make on something that costs a few dollars or less.

Thompson thinks consumers want to be able to buy items one at a time, though. And with this in mind, he said PayPal intends to allow purchases in small increments.

PayPal, which is owned by eBay Inc., plans to make that work by compiling consumers' transactions. Someone might buy $10 worth of news articles, or goods in an online game, before getting billed by PayPal. PayPal thinks this will appeal more to consumers while benefiting merchants and PayPal, too.

Online micropayments are not new. They emerged in the 1990s but never really caught on, in part because early attempts often had people spend tiny amounts of money - a dime here, a quarter there - instead of the currently popular model where you buy a bunch of credits up front and use them a little at a time.

But consumers are now much more used to the idea of buying virtual goods in online games and downloading content like songs and videos, and this change in behavior could benefit PayPal.

PayPal is already involved in the digital payment space. Last year, $2 billion of its total $71 billion in payment volume came from digital goods such as downloads of music, videos and software people bought online. And it seems to be growing: In the first half of this year, the company processed $1.3 billion in digital goods payments, Thompson said.

The company has gotten its feet wet in the world of micropayments, too, offering merchants a micropayment option that websites can use, charging a fee of 5 percent plus 5 cents for small transactions, which it sees as generally less than $10 apiece. This way, a $3 micropayment for a news article would cost the merchant 20 cents in transaction fees; under PayPal's normal fee schedule for items that cost up to $3,000, it would cost about 39 cents.

Still, Thompson thinks the upcoming payment product will be better, and hopefully more convenient, too. Right now, if you use PayPal to buy items in an online game such as Zynga's popular FarmVille, you're still prompted to leave the game mid-session to make the actual payment. Thompson wants to change this with PayPal's upcoming offering.

"The whole intent is to keep you in the experience, don't force you to do anything else ... and keep it economical for all parties," 

NASA shoots lasers at the Moon, because science is awesome

On "International Observe the Moon Night", and of the 400 or so Moon-centric gatherings around the world, this one had to be the most spectacular, as NASA shot laser blasts at the Moon...for strictly scientific purposes, honest.

Don't worry, this isn't the opening shots in NASA's long delayed invasion of the Moon. The laser, located at the Goddard Space Flight Center's Laser Ranging Facility in Greenbelt, Maryland, is used to track the location of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter as it moves around the Moon.

The probe is about the size of a small SUV, it's moving at 3,600 miles per hours, and it's located 250,000 miles away, and yet NASA can figure out exactly where it is at any given moment by firing lasers at it 28 times every second and then measuring how the focused light is reflected back to Earth.

Usually, these activities are closed to the public, but NASA allowed tourists into the facility to watch the operation as part of International Observe the Moon Night. Photographer Debbie Mccallum was able to get this awesome photo, which you can see in its full glory below.

Discover New Ancient Chilean bird had 17 foot wingspan and huge bony teeth

The newly identified ancient bird Pelagornis chilensis is one of the biggest birds ever discovered, with a gigantic 17 foot wingspan and spiny, teeth-like structures along its massive beak that it used to hunt fish and squid.

Bird fossils are some of the most difficult for paleontologists to get their hands on, because bird bones are unusually soft and fragile. This makes them poor candidates for fossilization, and many bird fossils that do survive are badly crushed. In fact, the only other bony-toothed bird skeleton we had before this new discovery was a single, mostly crushed fossil.

That's part of what makes the Pelagornis find so remarkable - it's 70% complete and in pristine condition, giving scientists incontrovertible proof of its immense size and unusual teeth. Discovered in northern Chile, the bird's great wingspan allows scientists to better understand the physics of winged flight, helping them set an upper limit for maximum wing size.

There are, in fact, some birds with even longer wingspans, most notably Argentavis, another ancient South American bird said to have a 19 to 26 foot wingspan. However, the fossil evidence for this bird is much less secure than that of Pelagornis, as we have had to extrapolate this wingspan estimate from very few surviving bones. Pelagornis, on the other hand, is the largest bird yet that paleontologists feel certain really did have the wingspan these measurements suggest
.

Laser-based missile defense for helicopters being developed

Protecting helicopters in combat from heat-seeking missiles is the goal of new laser technology created at the University of Michigan and Omni Sciences, Inc., which is a U-M spin-off company.

"Battlefield terrain in places like Afghanistan and Iraq can be so rough that our troops have often had to rely on helicopters, and they can be easy targets for enemies with shoulder-launched missiles," said Mohammed Islam, a professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
"Our lasers give off a signal that's like throwing sand in the eyes of the missile."
Using inexpensive, off-the-shelf telecommunications fiber optics, Islam is developing sturdy and portable "mid-infrared supercontinuum lasers" that could blind heat-seeking weapons from a distance of 1.8 miles away.
The technology is being commercialized through Islam's company, Omni Sciences, which has recently received $1 million in grants from the Army and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to build a second-generation prototype. The Army grant is for $730,000 and the DARPA funding is $300,000.
The lasers are promising for helicopter protection because their robust, simple design can withstand shaky helicopter flight and their mid-infrared supercontinuum mode can effectively jam missile sensors.
Most lasers emit light of just wavelength, or color. But supercontinuum lasers give off a focused beam packed with light from a much broader range of wavelengths. Visible-wavelength supercontinuum lasers, for example, discharge tight columns that appear white because they contain light from across the visible spectrum.
Islam's mid-infrared supercontinuum laser does the equivalent, but it is the first to operate in longer infrared wavelengths that humans can't see, but can feel as heat. Heat-seeking missiles are designed to home in on the infrared radiation that the helicopter engine emits.
Because this new laser emits such a broad spectrum of infrared light, it can effectively mimic the engine's electromagnetic signature and confuse any incoming weapons, Islam said.
This new light source has many military applications, Islam says, but it is especially well suited for helicopters.
"The laser-based infrared countermeasures in use now for some aircraft have 84 pieces of moving optics. They couldn't withstand the shake, rattle and roll of helicopters," Islam said. "We've used good, old-fashioned stuff from your telephone network to build a laser that has no moving parts."
Omni Sciences, Inc. has licensed Islam's technology from the University of Michigan. Islam has a financial interest in this company. Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and the Naval Air Command have also funded this research..

BlackBerry has recently launched BlackBerry Torch

BlackBerry has recently launched BlackBerry Torch touch screen smartphone powered with BlackBerry OS 6.

BlackBerry has significantly improved the touch sensitivity navigation with BlackBerry Torch that includes different home screen options such as Swipe Up – Swipe Down, Swipe left and Swipe Right.

Phenomenal improvement in UI and web kit browser is seen as well in BlackBerry Torch. All finger navigation on home screen popup with something useful on the screen.

BlackBerry OS 6 has changed a lot of traditional actions that previously existed in BlackBerry operating systems. One of the cool features is universal search function for searching contacts, tweets, messages, internet, files and more.

Two more important features that have been introduced with BlackBerry Torch are notification bar for accessing messages, emails and recent tweets for quick access, while another is easy access of Wi-Fi connections and Bluetooth activations.

Display:

Its display is geared with TFT touchscreen 3.2″ HVGA+ 480×360 pixel color display 3.18” measured diagonally with light sensing and proximity sensing screen. It is also ready with feature of user selectable font size.

Processor &Memory:

• 624 MHz Processor.
• 512 MB RAM
• 512MB onboard memory (ROM).
• 4GB eMMC (internal)
• microSD 4GB Media Card Included (Optional)

Connectivity & Location Based details:

It is ready with today’s connectivity needs as listed below:

• GPRS/EDGE/3G
• Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, • 802.11 b/g/n , WPA / WPA2 Personal and Enterprise , Cisco CCX certified , Wi-Fi® access to BlackBerry® Enterprise Server , Wi-Fi access to BlackBerry® Internet Bundle , Support for Unlicensed mobile access (carrier-dependent)
• Bluetooth® v2.1 +EDR Micro USB, Mono/stereo headset, Hands-free operation, Messaging access profile, Serial port profile, SIM access profile, Stereo audio (A2DP/AVCRP), Dial-up networking (DUN).
• A-GPS
• BlackBerry Maps

Multimedia:

It is capable of standard multimedia functions like:

• 5 MP camera , 2592х1944 pixels, autofocus, LED flash and it is ready with features like Geo-tagging, continuous auto-focus, image stabilization and Multiple picture-taking modes
• Video recording in VGA mode.
• It is ready to play – Audio formats: MP3, AMR-NB, AAC-LC, AAC+, eAAC+, WMA, WMV, Flac, OggVorbis and Video formats: MPEG4, H.263, H.264, WMV3.
• Ringtones : Polyphonic/MIDI ringtones, MP3 ringtones, Vibrate mode ,On-screen, LED indicator
• Speaker Phone.
• 3.5 mm Stereo Jack

Applications:

• BlackBerry OS 6
• New User Interface with improved transition effects.
• Document Editor
• Instant messaging
• BlackBerry Maps
• Web Kit Browser (pinch to zoom)
• Podcasts
• Media Player
• Video Player
• Social networking applications.
• Application management
• Online Media Streaming (Browser Access)

Input Selections:

• Hardware slide out Qwerty Keyboard
• Software QWERTY Keyboard.
• Track pad
• ESC key to right of track pad
• Menu key to left of track pad

Colors Availability:

• Black

Bonus Features:

• UMA (Unlicensed Mobile Access)
• Enhanced built-in memory and RAM.

Nutshell:

BlackBerry has come up with much better device in touch screen arena especially with better finger swipe navigation controls and sensitivity.

Overall, BlackBerry Torch has enhanced features as compared to its previous models in terms of LCD size, Pixel size, camera and finger touch navigation with traditional QWERTY style hard keypad.

Whereas, BlackBerry Torch’s battery capacity has decreased to 1300mAH as compared to BlackBerry Bold 9700′s 1500mAH.

We can hope that, Blackberry Torch may surface in Pakistan officially by some mobile operator soon, though BlackBerry Bold 9700 was not in hot list of cellular operators.

Nokia has recently announced Nokia X3-02 Touch

Nokia has recently announced Nokia X3-02 Touch and Type Mobile phone with 2.4 inch QVGA touch screen. Dual input selection by touch screen and keypad has added extra ordinary value to handset with power of touchscreen and keypad in a sleek phone with multifunctional entertainment like games, applications, instant access to music and lots more.

Design and Display:

Its Dimensions are 106.2 x 48.4 x 9.6 mm (Volume 45.2cc) in weight of 78g with battery. It is ready with is 2.4 inches resistive touchscreen supporting 256k colors in 240×320 QVGA TFT resolution.

Memory Details:

• Internal memory: 50 MB
• MicroSD memory card slot, hot swappable, up to 16 GB

Connectivity & Location Based details:

It supports:

• GPRS/EDGE/3G (Depends on mobile operators data support)
• Capability to serve as data modem
• WLAN 802.11 b,g,n
• Bluetooth Version 2.1 with A2DP
• Micro USB 2.0
• 3.5mm av connector

Multimedia:

It is capable of standard multimedia functions like:

• 5 Mega pixel camera (2592 x 1944 pixels)with Zoom up to 4x (digital), Full focus,Full screen viewfinder, Noise reduction, Image rotation (in the image editing mode or by changing the mode from portrait to landscape), Self-timer: picture is captured after 3, 5 or 10 seconds, White balance and colour tone effect settings, Still image formats: JPEG and RAW10, Upload photos through the web browser or Bluetooth.
• Its video camera is capable of capturing Video capture in QVGA at up to 20 fps with Settings for white balance and colour tone effect and Zoom up to 4x digital.
• Stereo FM Radio.
• It can play MPEG-4, 3GPP: H.263 and H.264 codecs and audio mp3, AAC, eAAC, eAAC+ and WMA.
• Equalizer
• Support for .nfl (FlashLite content) videoDRM support WMDRM10, OMA DRM 2.0
• It supports ringtones formats in : eAAC, eAAC+, AAC+, AAC, MP3, OGG

Applications:

• Series 40 6th edition
• Firmware update over the air (FOTA)
• Converter
• Size converter
• World clock
• Web Search
• Ovi Store
• Opera mini browser
• Nokia Xpress Audio Messaging.
• Flash Messaging
• Adobe Flashlight 3.0 support
• Java MIDP 2.1 support
• Social Network Integration
• My Nokia
• Guitar Hero 5
• Hip Hop Tournament.
• Home screen Widgets support.
• Instant Messaging Support.

INPUT Method:

• Call and end keys
• Dedicated messaging key
• Dedicated music key

Colors Availability:

• Petrol blue
• White silver
• Pink
• Dark metal
• Lilac

Noticeable Features:

• 5 Megapixel Camera
• Dual input select, like keypad and touch screen.

Nutshell:

Overall this phone seems more attractive with dual input selection with keypad and touchscreen. Multimedia functions seem pretty good for music lovers with dedicated music key and Ovi Music store support.

Whereas, Sensors would have added more value to the handset if they would be available like accelerometer for UI auto rotate and proximity sensors.