New Drilling Technology Now In Testing Stages

via Gizmodo by Jesus Diaz on 6/15/09

If everything goes well, soon we will be able to reach the center of the Earth using 7200ºF flame jets that can go into any kind of material at 100 feet an hour. Wait, "if everything goes well"?

Yes, apparently this is a great idea because it can be the key to obtain cheap geothermal power. These drills—created by Jared Potter—will go deep into Mother Earth to reach the magma to make geothermal energy wells. The magma will be used then to superheat water and produce electricity using steam and turbines—forever and ever—something that is impossible now even with today's state-of-the-art drilling technology.

Unlike current drilling methods, the flame-jets make holes without touching the rock itself. Potter has two prototypes so far, both with the same results. The first fires a 3200ºF hydrogen flame to heat the rock, making cracks that expand into a full hole in a matter of minutes. The other one superheats a jet of water at 7200ºF and can work at super-deep levels, with extreme pressures.

They are both in the preliminary testing stages, but as you can see in the video, they show promise. If they work, it will be great idea with—hopefully—great benefits for all of mankind.

Sony Unveils New PSP GO

via Designboom - Weblog on 6/3/09

sony unveiled their latest portable gaming device the psp go, at the e3 conference on tuesday. the device 
is sony’s follow up to the original psp portable gaming unit. the new psp go features a slide out control 
pad and will go on sale on october 1 in north america and europe. the design is 40 percent lighter and 
much smaller than the original. it will also feature a wi-fi connection and 16 gb of flash memory. 
unlike its predecessor, the psp go will not have a disc drive and instead gamers will download games 
and other software. aiming to capture the digital lifestyle market, the new device will support music and
videos, in addition to games.

http://www.sony.com

ASUS Mars GPU may be the world's fastest

via DVICE by Kevin Hall on 6/1/09

ASUS decided to skip all the incremental one-upmanship that's a graphics card industry standard and knock it out of the park with its Mars 295 Limited Edition GPU. The gorgeous pair boast a performance bump of 21% more power than the standard dual-core GTX 295 from NVIDIA, while housed in a sweet looking cooling sleeve. ASUS will only roll out a limited number of them and, if you can't see it up there in the corner, this one reads 1/1000.

All told, the new card boasts all 240 shader processors on each GPU, a full 512-bit GDDR3 memory interface, 32 memory chips for 4GB total (2GB accessible per GPU), and the same core/shader/memory clockspeeds as the GTX 285 (648/1476/2400 MHz). By comparison, a traditional GTX 295 sports 896MB of GDDR3 per GPU on a 448-bit memory bus with core/shader/memory clockspeeds checking in at 576/1242/2000 MHz.

Engadget, via VizWorld, via MaximumPC

Brando's new Zippo lighter hides a tiny video camera

via DVICE by AdamFrucci on 6/1/09

Brando's new Zippo lighter has more to it than meets the eye. Specifically, it's got a videocamera and microphone built in (well, a "mircophone" according to their press images, but let's go ahead and assume they mean microphone).

The Zippo has 2GB of built-in memory and takes 640x480 video at 16fps in .avi format. It connects to your computer via USB to take the video off and will set you back $66. Just don't blame us when the mircophone isn't what you thought it would be.

Brando via Technabob

Latest plasma display is a razor-thin 1mm thick

via DVICE by CharlieWhite on 5/11/09

We've seen some thin plasma screens, but this one beats all. Shinoda Plasma Japan just unveiled a huge plasma display, 2 meters tall by 3 meters wide, and it's an astonishing 1mm thick (the display pictured above is another of Shinoda's plasmas, in a more horizontal configuration). Plasmas are usually energy hogs, but this one uses half the electricity of comparably sized displays available now.

This gigantic and flexible screen isn't built all in one piece — it's actually six sheets joined together, and it's not light, weighing nearly 200 pounds. Don't be worried about carrying it into your living room anytime soon, though — the first screens will appear on as-yet-unnamed products this fall for $51,000 each. Consider this a peek into the future.

Via Far East Gizmos

Solid-state drive teams up with blazing-fast RAM for incredible speed

via DVICE by CharlieWhite on 5/5/09

Our jaws are still agape over that lightning fast ioDrive Duo solid-state drive we showed you last month, but now here's one that can beat it, the DDRdrive X1. It combines the blazing speed of 4GB of RAM with the backup confidence of 4GB of flash memory right next to it.

You don't want to keep your data in RAM, because it will go away as soon as you turn off your PC. That's why it's great to have it paired up with some really fast flash memory, keeping everything you're doing saved. It can either back up or restore all your data in 60 seconds.

The result? Mind-numbing speed on random reads and writes. That's one thing that makes a PC really feel fast. But all that speed has a downside, as you may have guessed. This measly 4GB drive costs $1495. Yes, that's crazy, but this is another one of those pieces of bleeding-edge tech that gives you a peek into what the rest of us could be using a couple of years from now.

PC Perspective, via Engadget