Graphene has long-held notions of grandeur over its current silicon overlord, but a few practical issues have always kept its takeover bid grounded. Samsung, however, thinks it’s cracked at least one of those — graphene’s inability to switch off current. Previous attempts to use graphene as a transistor have involved converting it to a semi-conductor, but this also reduces its electron mobility, negating much of the benefit. Samsung’s Advanced Institute of Technology has created a graphene-silicon “Schottky barrier” that brings graphene this much-needed current-killing ability, without losing its electron-shuffling potential. The research also explored potential logic device applications based on the same technology. So, does this mean we’ll finally get our flea-sized super computer implant? Maybe, not just yet, but the wheels have certainly been oiled.

Continue reading Samsung pushes graphene one step closer to silicon supremacy

Samsung pushes graphene one step closer to silicon supremacy originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 18 May 2012 04:47:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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RADISYS RACKABLE SYSTEMS QUEST SOFTWARE QUANTUM

At the release of the iPad 2, Apple also brought out its Smart Cover product, which quickly became a favorite. Although the new iPad 3 is a little thicker through the middle than the iPad 2 (due to a bigger battery), it is still compatible with the previous Smart Covers that are currently for sale. This is excellent news as the Smart Cover not only protects the iPad screen from scratches and scrapes but is also functional and practical, and [...]

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Virgin Atlantic begins offering cellphone coverage on transatlantic flights. The pricey, and somewhat limited, service will use items found in space and in the homes of outlying carrier customers to help passengers call in sick to work while flying to London.

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Amazon is reportedly pitching Kindle Fire welcome-screen ads. If they can pull it off, it could lead to an even cheaper Kindle Fire.

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It’s only been a few days since we first heard the rumors about an upcoming, Sprint-bound LG quad-core slab, and now that same LS970 “superphone” is back for more action. Thanks to yet another snap acquired by the folks over at BriefMobile, we can now spot a couple extra details on the device, including its previously unknown NFC capabilities. Contrary to earlier beliefs, the alleged LG Eclipse also seems to offer a removable battery, which is likely to make some power users very content. Something tells us this isn’t the last we’re going to see of this super handset, though, so we’ll keep you in the loop if any more noteworthy findings appear.

LG LS970 ‘superphone’ shows up again, flaunts its removable battery and NFC chip originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 18 May 2012 05:32:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Pastebin is a very popular website aimed at coders and other nerdy types, which allows them (or should I say, us) to paste and share snippets of code with lovely syntax highlighting.

It has recently undergone a major overhaul which includes the release of a brand new Windows client. The new client lets you create new “pastes” and manage your existing ones. It joins a host of other tools from Pastebin, such as the Google and Chrome extensions, OS X widget and the mobile apps.

If you’re currently using Pastebin, the new client is a great addition. And if you haven’t tried it before, next time you have a piece of code you want to share or get some feedback on, you could do worse than try out Pastebin.

[Thanks, Jeroen!]

Pastebin updated to V3, releases Windows app originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 04 Mar 2011 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Motorola device owners have been pretty vocal about their want for Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich on their devices. Motorola in response to that, has kept an ICS rollout schedule updated and recently they made some changes to it that will either excite you or upset you, depending on which device you own.

Droid RAZR, Droid RAZR MAXX and XOOM 3G/4G owners have the most to be excited about as ICS updates for those devices should be rolling out at just about any moment right now. Atrix, Atrix 2, Droid Bionic, Droid 4 and XYBOARD owners will be waiting until the next quarter for their updates.

Own a Droid 3 or Droid X2 though? Looks as though you better start looking towards some ICS compatible ROM's as those devicse will be stuck on Android 2.3 Gingerbread for the remainder of their lifecycle, minus some bug fix and maintenance releases.

Source: Motorola, Android Central Forums

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We’ve all heard it before; you need to select a lengthy password, one that’s hard to guess. Not a dictionary word. And it has to have some capital letters in it too, and some digits, and a symbol or two won’t hurt either.

That’s a handy set of rules to keep in mind, but How Secure is My Password helps us understand why they’re important.

It’s basically like a full-screen version of one of those password-strength meters websites sometimes use. But instead of showing you a bar going from “weak” to “strong”, it shows you an estimation of how long your password would take to crack. That’s a much more visceral way to understand why your password is strong.

For example, when I entered “rabbit”, it came back with “your password is one of the 500 most common passwords. It could be cracked almost instantly”. “rabbit5″ would take two hours, “$rabbit5″ would take 38 days, and “$rabbitZ5″ would take 237 years. It’s quite enlightening to see what a difference three simple characters can make.

How Secure is My Password lets you know just that originally appeared on Download Squad on Sat, 05 Mar 2011 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Today’s hard drives may be smaller, faster, cheaper and more capacious than their predecessors, but the need for ever-tinier components is making it difficult to keep improving them. Therein lies at least part of the motivation behind biocomputing — in which microscopic biological molecules are being recruited to play a role — and recently scientists have identified a fresh new possibility in this area.

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RIM recently proposed a new nano-SIM card design to counter one proposal made by Apple to the the European Telecommunications Standards Instititute.

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