Gadgets point

  Internal documents show Dell shipped at least 11.8 million computers from May 2003 to July 2005 that could fail After the math department at the University of Texas noticed some of its Dell computers failing, Dell examined the machines. The company came up with an unusual reason for the computers’ demise: the school had overtaxed the machines by making them perform difficult math calculations. Dell, however, had actually sent the university, in Austin, desktop PCs riddled with faulty electrical components that were leaking chemicals and causing the malfunctions. Dell sold millions of these computers from 2003 to 2005 to major companies like Wal-Mart and Wells Fargo, institutions like the Mayo Clinic and small businesses.  “The funny thing was that every one of them went bad at the same time,” said Greg Barry, the president of PointSolve, a technology services company near Philadelphia that had bought dozens.  “It’s unheard-of, but Dell didn’t seem to recognize ...

Japan-based Toshiba and China-based Lenovo are set to launch new smartbooks by the end of August and the end-of-year holidays, respectively. Toshiba will launch a smartbook under its Dynabook line, featuring Nvidia's Tegra 250 processor, Google's Android operating system and a 10.1-inch display. The device will initially launch in Japan and gradually spread to Europe, the Middle-East and Africa. In addition, Toshiba is preparing two ARM-based tablet PCs for the end of 2010, which the company has outsourced to Pegatron Technology. Although Lenovo has already revealed its two smartbooks, the Skylight and IdeaPad U1 Hybrid, the company recently decided to upgrade their specifications from Qualcomm's single-core 1GHz processor to Qualcomm's new dual-core 1.5GHz processors such as MSM8260, MSM8660 and QSD8672, while also switching the operating system to Android, and so will delay the official launch until the end of the year. Compal Electronics and Wistron will both b...

Yesterday, Digg CEO Kevin Rose tweeted that he’d heard a “huge rumor” that Google was planning to launch a Facebook competitor called “Google Me”, sparking off a wave of speculative reports (Rose has since removed the tweet). Now Adam D’Angelo, who was Facebook’s CTO for years and is now founder of hot Q&A service Quora , is weighing in with more details. And from what he’s hearing, Google Me is indeed very real, and it’s gunning for Facebook.  D’Angelo shared his thoughts as an answer to one of the questions on Quora. Here’s his response: Here is what I’ve pieced together from some reliable sources: This is not a rumor. This is a real project. There are a large number of people working on it. I am completely confident about this. They realized that Buzz wasn’t enough and that they need to build out a full, first-class social network. They are modeling it off of Facebook. Unlike previous attempts (before Buzz at least), this is a high-priority project within Google. Th...

 Sure, Microsoft may have given away its lead and legacy in mobile and probably jumped into too many hyper-competitive sectors, but they still have the widest reach in technology. And they're still pretty damn successful. In recent years, Microsoft may be a step or two behind, but they're relevant in nearly every sector. And with Office 2010, a new Xbox 360, Kinect, and perhaps most importantly, Windows Phone 7, all receiving substantial upgrades this year, 2010 is shaping up to be absolutely huge for them. And that's coming off a 2009 where Windows 7, Bing and the Zune HD were introduced. We're just so used to Microsoft being around that we sort of take them for granted for all the good that they do. So Microsoft revealed some numbers to serve as a reminder.

Lightning strikes three of the tallest buildings in Chicago at the same time! For the third time in the last 6 days, another line of nasty storms rolled through Chicago on Wednesday evening. I love coming home and being able to watch and capture nature's beauty from my balcony. In this clip you will see three of the tallest buildings in Chicago get struck by lightning at the same time. Willis Tower (Tallest), Trump International Hotel and Tower (2nd Tallest) and the John Hancock Building(4th tallest). HD Video was shot on a Canon EOS 7D. Video was edited with Sony Vegas Movie Studio. "Wed's storms towered up to 63,000 ft, unleashed 80 mph gusts, local 3"+ rains and 15,000 cloud to ground lightning strikes in a single hour." via @Skilling .

One of Britain's top technologists is leaving Nokia. Charles Davies, Psion's first employee in 1981, became MD of Psion Computer before leaving to join Symbian as CTO in 2003. Since Nokia acquired the Symbian staff two years ago, he was heading up the strategy and architecture team for Nokia R&D. A plasma physics PhD, Davies was involved in many of the milestones achieved by Britain's last computer company. Psion created its own silicon and pioneered popular mobile innovations such as flash memory to market. He stayed with the company after Psion withdrew from the consumer market in 2001, working on a partnership with Nokia to create communicators, PDAs and messaging software that never bore fruit - although the UI intended for those devices (Hildon) later appeared in Nokia's widescreen phones, and its Linux tablet. His new destination is another home for the Psion diaspora, TomTom. TomTom's phenomenal rise from software company to consumer hardware was pilo...

Ever wondered how chocolates are manufactured in the company? Or ever thought how chocolates are done? Its not how we think. Its simple and little time taking.. This video had been shoot in the moonstruck chocolate company. Enjoy and have fun. Source [via teche ]