Filed under: Desktops, Gaming

AMD’s got a new performance-per-dollar platform for running Phenom processors without breaking the bank. The 790GX is being positioned right below AMD’s top of the line 790FX, with a typical motherboard built around the technology costing around $355. Primary advantages of the chipset include Advanced Clock Calibration, which allows Phenom speeds of 3.2GHz and up, and ATI Radeon HD 3300 integrated graphics — though of course you can ramp up to discreet graphics or CrossFireX if you’re really feeling it. The folks at HotHardware already took a chipset for a spin, and while it won’t be besting the best from Intel, it seems to be showing some strong leadership in its price category compared to related Intel and NVIDIA technologies. It’s shipping now.

Read - AMD PR
Read - Hot Hardware review

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Share This

Filed under: Cellphones, Laptops

Sure, we just saw the Celio REDFLY unboxed last month, but come on — you know you really wanted one of the Foleo-like WinMo “companions” all to yourself, and now you can have one — for $499. Yep, 5 bills to use WinMo 5 or 6 on an 8-inch screen — and you can’t use it at all if you don’t have your phone. Or, you could spend your money on something 1000x more useful and get one of the million netbooks that have been released since this thing was first announced, but hey — don’t let a silly thing like common sense stand between you and your phone’s desire to be loved. One more short unboxing vid after the break.

Continue reading REDFLY now available for $499, purpose even less clear

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Share This

Filed under: Science, Health & Medical, Celebrities, Food News

One of my favorite early Saturday Night Live skits was featured John Belushi as an Olympic athlete. The scene opens with clips of Belushi doing a high jump and running around a track, then cuts to a shot of him at the breakfast table. Clutching a cigarette, Belushi looks into the camera with complete gravitas and tells about his secret to staying fit: “I downed a lot of donuts. Little chocolate donuts. They taste good and they’ve got the sugar I need to get me going in the morning.”

The commercial played off the classic “Wheaties” ads, which featured Bruce Jenner. The prevailing wisdom in those days stated that top-class athletes had to eat extremely healthy foods, like whole grain cereal and skinless, boneless chicken. However, as I recently read about Michael Phelps’ daily eating regimen, I was surprised to see that his diet is much closer to John Belushi’s than to Richard Simmons. To begin with, the Olympian consumes approximately 12,000 calories a day, roughly six times the RDA for a man his age. Second, it is heavily skewed towards carbohydrates and fats, which most diets eschew. Given Phelps’ amazing energy expenditure (in the average week, the guy swims five hours a day, six days a week!

At any rate, Phelps’ average daily menu is after the jump…

Continue reading Michael Phelps’ diet: Eat like a champion!

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Share This

Filed under: Lost, Celebrities, Reality-Free

We mentioned that Matthew Fox (along with Evangeline Lilly) was in negotiations for a higher salary. Well, it looks like he got it. Fox will now be earning about $225,000 per episode of Lost, as opposed to the approximately $150,000 per episode he was making before.

I guess Jack Shepard will be with us through the rest of the season (and likely the rest of the series). If the character were more disposable, it’s likely he would have gone the way of other now-dead Lost characters such as Charlie.

Continue reading More money for Matthew Fox

Permalink | Email this | | Comments

Share This

Share This

Julia Stiles has split from Jonathan Cramer, it has been confirmed.

The “Bourne Ultimatum” star - who had been dating the painter and sculptor for more than two years - blamed the relationship breakdown on “irreconcilable differences.”

The announcement comes after the 27-year-old actress was seen at a New York’s Cafe Frida venting her frustration on customers who were taking photographs of each other.

Julia reportedly thought they were taking pictures of her and as the actress left she waved to them and shouted: “Bye, guys - glad you got your picture!”

A representative for the actress said: “Julia was trying to get out of the way of the picture. She wasn’t being sarcastic.”

Julia star shot to fame after her role in 1999 movie “10 Things I Hate About You” alongside late actor Heath Ledger.

She has since appeared in films including “Mona Lisa Smile” and “The Prince and Me” and can soon be seen in “The Bell Jar,” a movie adaptation of Sylvia Plath’s infamous novel.

Share This

“We are actually reviewing iPhones from a HSBC Group perspective…and when I say that, I mean globally,”( Brenton Hush, HSBC’s Australia and New Zealand CIO).

While this is true, this sounds to me like a warning to Blackberry to lower its prices (hardware and services) in this round of negotiations that involves as much as 200,000 phones. Now that the iPhone supports Exchange Server, some think that it could start to get some market share in the lucrative business market, so far this has not really happened on any significant scale, so if HSBC was to switch, it would be a great premiere for Apple. The blackberry service is more expensive to run than a plain Server Exchange setup. Of course, I image that both Apple and Blackberry are currently locked in a knife-fight behind the scenes…

Source article | Add a comment

Share This

Filed under: Before the bell, Earnings reports, Deals, Google (GOOG), Apple Inc (AAPL), Dell (DELL), Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A), Market matters, Penney (J.C.) (JCP), Merrill Lynch (MER), Kohl’s Corp (KSS), Abercrombie and Fitch (ANF), Economic data, Nordstrom, Inc (JWN), Oil, Union Pacific Corporation (UNP), MBIA Inc (MBI)

U.S. stock futures were higher Friday morning, indicating stock markets could possibly extend Thursday’s rally as the dollar rose and oil prices fell further. The dollar continues to make gains on the back of growing evidence of global economic softness. Still, several economic readings are due out today, including the New York Empire State manufacturing index , capacity utilization and industrial production — all before the opening bell.

Retail will be in focus today after two Kohl’s Corp (NYSE: KSS) and Nordstrom (NYSE: JWN) reported late Thursday, and J.C. Penney (NYSE: JCP) and Abercrombie & Fitch (NYSE: ANF) are due to report before the opening bell.

Kohl’s Corp shares could start higher as premarket indication has them trading 2.3% higher, while Nordstrom’s are trading 4% lower in premarket action. Kohl’s quarterly profit fell 12% from a year ago, but the retailer lifted its fiscal year profit forecast. Meanwhile, upper scale Nordstrom, reported a 21% drop in second-quarter profits and cut full year outlook.

ANF said second-quarter profit fell on lower sales of jeans and T-shirts and forecast full-year earnings per share that trailed some analysts’ estimates. JCP also saw profit decline but beat estimates and issued lower guidance.

Autodesk (NASDAQ: ADSK) shares are trading 10% higher in premarket action after the design software maker reported stronger-than-forecast second-quarter earnings Thursday after the close.

Bond insurers MBIA (NYSE: MBI) and Ambac (NYSE: ABK) spiked 7.7% and 16.2% respectively premarket after Standard & Poor’s affirmed its AA credit rating on the two companies and said further downgrades were unlikely.

Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.A), the investment firm run by billionaire Warren Buffett, revealed a stake in the energy wholesaler NRG Energy (NYSE: NRG) and acquired additional shares of train operator Union Pacific (NYSE: UNP). NRG is climbing 5.7% in premarket trading.

Merrill Lynch (NYSE: MER) will institute a hiring freeze for the remainder of 2008, and will avoid paying UK taxes for decades after it charged $29 billion of losses to its London-based subsidiary, the Financial Times wrote.

Republic Services (NYSE: RSG) overnight rejected the takeover bid from Waste Management (NYSE: WMI), saying its proposed merger with Allied Waste Industries (NYSE: AW) is more favorable. It also is declining to have discussions and negotiations with Waste Management.

BuisnessWeek has an interesting article on the man Dell Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) has put in charge of its entry to the digital entertainment market. The former Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) executive will try to overtake Apple’s dominant hold of the market.

The New York Times reports that T-Mobile will be the first carrier to offer a mobile phone powered by Google (NASDAQ: GOOG)’s Android software.

Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

Share This

Filed under: Action, Comedy, Paramount, Theatrical Reviews

Tropic Thunder, starring Ben Stiller as one of a group of runaway actors whose work on a big-budget Vietnam epic goes horribly awry, is a funny, far-fetched mockery of modern Hollywood; the laughs don’t maintain anything like a coherent intensity, but when they come, they’re big enough to get you through the spaces between them. Some will mistakenly call Tropic Thunder a satire, but Tropic Thunder is in fact an example of satire’s boisterous, bumbling sibling, the spoof. A satire’s held with a light but precise grip, so the point can slice and the blade can cut; a spoof’s more of a club, landing with blunt force and broad impact.

Star and director Stiller attacked the celebrity-industrial complex before, in 2001’s Zoolander, and Tropic Thunder has more in common with that film than you might think; Stiller manages to mock action and thrills while also delivering them, and he’s got a fine grasp of coarse celebrity behavior. Stiller seems drawn to characters whose self-centered arrogance is mixed in equal measure with self-loathing insecurity. We see an interview clip where Stiller’s character, box office star Tugg Speedman, is informed by an interviewer how “Someone close to you said ‘One more flop and it’s over for him.’” Speedman pauses, and then asks his follow-up: “Somebody said they were close to me?”

Continue reading Review: Tropic Thunder

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Share This

Filed under: Rants, News

With the release of the new Home beta, we now have a much clearer idea of how these region restrictions, that we discovered at E3, are being implemented. It seems that the client reacts to your console’s native region, locking you out of any Home servers that don’t match it. That means that if you’re a UK gamer who imported from the US, you’ll be spending all of your time with Americans inside Home. If you imported from Japan … well, you can guess where that’s headed.

What we find bizarre is that it’s such a strict lock-out, and that you’re not given any degree of choice in the matter. It seems so weird that anyone can access any region’s PSN Store, but not the online social networking hub. We can only assume that similar restrictions as on the store will be made for purchasing within Home. That is to say, if you’re a UK credit card owner you won’t be able to spend anything in the US Home without some jiggery pokery.

Obviously, this all makes sense to Sony. Home is meant to be a big income generator for them; mostly through advertising. They want the most appropriate eyes to see these adverts in order to maximise the “click through” rate. There’s no point advertising Mountain Dew to a UK citizen, for example. But console-specific region locking is not the answer. At the very least, set up an IP location check or, god forbid, give people a choice.

Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

Share This

Sultry singer and actress, Sherlyn Chopra, has been kicked out of the Bigg Boss 2 show by the producers as they found her demands and conditions quite outrageous.
The Outrageous singer apparently asked for a whooping sum of 3 crores to for her 3-month stay at the Big Boss home.
The buxom babe found success with her […]

Share This