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First talked about at Computex 2008, the newest entry to the ASUS ‘Eee family’ is the Eee Monitor. This product aims to give you everything you would expect a monitor to provide alongside display. The monitor in the pictures looks to be 19 to 20 inch, has a fixed web-cam, a 4-port USB hub, but what looks rather strange is that this ‘monitor’ doesn’t looks like it has a D-Sub or DVI connector leading us to believe it’s a self-contained PC a-là Apple Mac. The connectors behind show an ethernet port, a phone jack, standard sound jacks (line-in, line-out, mic), and the usual power-input. If it’s meant to serve as a monitor, it must also double as a docking station, because otherwise there’s no reason to have Ethernet and audio ports. The product also features integrated speakers made by Denon. It also features integrated data-card readers.

First-tier makers NVIDIA and AMD are dissatisfied with Intel’s ownership of the USB 3.0 specification, CNET reported yesterday. The next-generation high-speed USB 3.0 specification is aiming to become standard in 2009. It will be 10 times faster than USB 2.0 and at the same time as widespread as the current USB 2.0. The USB 3.0 will also retain full compatibility with USB 2.0 and presumably USB 1.0. The main investitors behind the USB 3.0 specs include Intel as well as Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, Texas Instruments, NEC, and NXP Semiconductors. “The challenge is that Intel is not…giving the specification to anybody that competes with CPUs and chipsets,” said a source close to AMD who is familiar with the dispute. As a result AMD, NVIDIA, VIA Technologies and probably others could be driven to create their own USB 3.0 specification that may lead to a lot of frustration and money lost on development. “We are going to be forced to create a secondary specification … new open host controller standard for USB 3.0.” the AMD source added. “They could spend the time, engineers and money developing their own host controller spec,” an Intel source said. “In the past they have chosen to let us do the work and then benefit from the fruit of our labor.

Seagate CEO Bill Watkins, outlined yesterday that his company won’t release any solid state drives until next year. “SSDs are not price-competitive yet,” Watkins said. First Seagate SSDs will start to appear as late as next year, and target only enterprise market. Seagate has no plans to release SSD drives for consumers because of the high prices and other problems that still part solid state drives from conventional hard disks. “If the cost per gigabyte comes down to 10 cents, maybe,” Seagate will focus on SSD storage for consumers, Watkins said. But “It will take three to four years for SSDs to come to parity with hard drives,” he thinks. In related news, Bill Watkins also announced plans to introduce 2TB conventional hard drive next year. The exact release date and price information for the 2TB hard drive is still distant though.

AMD announced the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3800, tripling top-of-the line graphics performance in comparison to the previous generation ATI Mobility Radeon GPUs. Joining the previously announced ATI Mobility Radeon 3000 family, the new ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3800 series offers notebook manufacturers the ability to deliver fast graphics performance, energy-efficient 55nm graphics processor technology, amazing video playback, and, for the first time ever, ATI CrossFireX technology for a mobile graphics solution.

If you’re a Netflix subscriber you may have noticed that in the last year or so the company has rolled out a Watch Now option that lets you instantly watch some of the movies and TV shows in the Netflix library on your Windows PC with a broadband connection.

More recently, in upgrading its digital offerings, Netflix has taken things a step further by separating out the Instant Queue from your DVD Queue.

While the all-you-can-eat streaming video option is a nice perk for users (it’s available to any subscriber on the $8.95 per month plan or better), the real dream for many people is that instead of watching movies on your PC’s monitor, you cut out the computer completely and go right to your TV.

Well, with the Netflix Player by Roku ($100) that has become a reality.

Microsoft plans a completely new GUI for versions of Windows 7 running on the kind of high-powered computers that now run Vista. The same team that designed Office 2007 is in charge of this interface, and it’s likely we’ll see something like the Office 2007 Ribbon in place of Windows’ traditional menus and toolbars. Unlike the Office Ribbon, however, the new UI—whatever it finally looks like—will be something you can turn on or off, so corporate users can maintain the same interface they’ve been using for years, without expensive retraining.

Many clues to what the Windows 7 development team is thinking about can be found in the Windows Feedback Button found in the early builds. This Feedback tool invites developers to comment on the five “pillars” on which Windows 7 will be built. Each is divided into a number of scenarios that have only brief and vague descriptions. Here’s a quick description of the pillars, with some guesses at what the associated scenarios might portend for Windows 7. The fullest analysis we’ve seen of these pillars is a long posting by “Bryant” at AeroXperience (www.aeroxp.org).

The first pillar is “Specialized for Laptops.” Scenarios associated with it include data security, speed, wireless improvements, synchronization, and power management. One scenario is called “Touch and Tablet Usability,” which may have something to do with the rumors that Microsoft, having been stung by the touch-screen keyboard in Apple’s iPhone, is planning something even better for Windows. Indeed, Microsoft recently announced plans to integrate multi-touch technology in Windows 7, making user input possible by touching and gesturing your fingertip around the screen—a way of one-upping the iPhone interface while covering your monitor with greasy fingerprints.

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India and Brazil have filed appeals against the adoption of the Microsoft-sponsored Office Open XML (OOXML) document format as an international standard.

Their appeals join one from South Africa, filed last Friday with the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), the two standardization bodies responsible for the technical committee which approved the OOXML standard.

“By the deadline last night, we had received three appeals, from Brazil, India and South Africa,” said Jonathan Buck, spokesman for IEC.

“The Indian appeal was not lodged in the correct procedure it was not send to the CEOs of the two organizations but nonetheless it has been received,” Buck said, adding that it will be treated in the same way as the Brazilian and South African appeals.

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When looking for an e-commerce solution, the first thing you will want to look at is your shopping cart solution. Not every cart accepts every gateway. most if not all accept authorize.net or link point but there are some big companies who use gateways such as secure pay or even their own gateways which may not be supported by your cart.

A great way for any business owner to improve their offerings is to step back and look at their e-store as though they were a consumer. And we are all consumers at some point of our everyday lives, so it’s not such a stretch. Think about what you would want to find on your site if you were going to be shopping there. And assuming that you found everything you wanted, how would you feel if you got to the checkout page and found that you could not pay using your credit card? Would you be willing to go find your check book and a stamp? Or would you navigate to a place online that was more attuned to what you wanted? It’s like having e-commerce merchant account services with credit card machine.

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Microsoft has confirmed that Windows 7 is on track for release in 2010. During its internal “MGX” global sales meeting this week, Microsoft witnessed that the code name for Vista’s successor is “Windows 7″ and the project is due to see light in approximately three years.

For me It’s nice to check details how one things work. For that reason I usually find it on the internet. One my favorite site is howstuffworks. Yesterday I bought new toaster ovens. It’s always bothering me, how small stuff like that can do your cooking job. So just like before, start with googling it.

How Toaster Ovens Work?

Basically a toaster oven is similar with toaster itself. They operate in the same manner. A slice of bread, a frozen waffle, a toaster strudel, or some similar food item is placed through a slot in the top of the toaster and into the carriage. The carriage is lowered into the chassis using the lever at the side of the toaster. When it reaches the bottom, the carriage latches in position and an internal switch is activated to start the heating process. A thermostat determines how long electric current will be sent from the power cord to the heating elements.

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