system

Nokia is promising big things for a September 5 event in New York City.

The mobile company today posted a video showing a woman riding a bike down a street. About midway through that clip, a text overlay comes up that reads: "Things are about to change." The video's description on YouTube adds a bit more details, saying that the change is coming "5 September 2012. Stay tuned!"

Nokia announced earlier this month that it will host a New York press conference on September 5. The company said the event will be in partnership with … Read more

Intel's system-on-a-chip design for small devices is slated to go quad core.

Leaked Intel documents dated August 15 have appeared on a Chinese-language Web site that indicate Intel's next-generation system-on-a-chip (SoC) will be offered in configurations that include quad-core, a first for Intel's Atom chip design, according to a report at CPU World.

At the risk of wading too deeply into a codename quagmire, the Atom 22-nanometer architecture is dubbed "Silvermont" and the SoCs are referred to as "ValleyView."

The chips will also get punched-up graphics. ValleyView SoCs will integrate a graphics processing … Read more

In OS X, Apple supports the configuration of various network proxy servers for individual ports in its Network system preferences. In some instances users have been reporting odd formatting issues in which entered proxy port settings either adopt commas or decimal points, though the proxy settings still work just fine.

As with most network services, proxy settings require a specific communications port to be set so network traffic can be directed to the appropriate background tasks that require it. In many cases such as Web browsing (port 80) or FTP access (port 21) these ports are fairly well established and … Read more

Apple's Mountain Lion and Microsoft's Windows 8 are now out in the real world. And this time more than ever, the two companies are taking the computer into two distinct directions.

After using both of the new operating systems, it's easy to see that each is more solid, more stable, and filled with more-compelling features than ever before. It's also true that Microsoft's radical new operating system is gorgeous, but this is not a beauty contest. Like I pointed out in my review for Mountain Lion, I still think Apple made the better choice in … Read more

Cisco reported a better-than-expected fourth quarter as the company weathered a tricky fiscal year.

Cisco reported fourth-quarter earnings of $1.9 billion, or 36 cents a share, on revenue of $11.7 billion, up 4 percent from a year ago. Non-GAAP earnings were 47 cents a share.

Wall Street was expecting non-GAAP earnings of 45 cents a share on revenue of $11.6 billion.

For fiscal 2012, Cisco reported earnings of $8 billion, or $1.49 a share, on revenue of $46.1 billion, up 7 percent from a year ago.

In a statement, Cisco CEO John Chambers said the … Read more

The electronic brain controlling NASA's Curiosity Mars rover has far less horsepower than the microchips typically found in a modern smart phone.

But the RAD750 PowerPC microprocessor built into the rover's redundant flight computers has one enormous advantage: It was engineered to be virtually impervious to high-energy cosmic rays that would quickly cripple an iPhone or laptop computer.

The radiation-hardened single-card computers, built by BAE Systems in Manassas, Va., are designed to withstand charged ions and protons in interplanetary space or on the surface of Mars that can physically damage integrated circuits or trigger so-called "bit flips&… Read more

Research In Motion could be attempting to hold discussions with Samsung over the prospect of the handset maker licensing its BlackBerry 10 operating system.

In a note to investors today, Jefferies analyst Peter Misek said he believes that "RIM is attempting to revive discussions with Samsung regarding a BB10 licensing deal," according to All Things Digital, which obtained a copy of the note. Misek didn't say if discussions have kicked off yet and if so, how far he believes they have gone.

Rumors have been swirling for some time that Samsung and RIM have been holding talks. … Read more

The only thing cooler than free media players might be the free codecs that improve playback quality or enable more file types. There are so many to choose from that it's often hard to know which is best, especially when there's more than one or two choices, like for MP3s: LAME, FLAC, AC3, and so on. JockerSoft's CodecInstaller is a free tool that scans your system, identifies your media players, and suggests codecs for them that can expand or improve their capabilities.

CodecInstaller's compact, vertically oriented interface has three main controls, each self-explanatory: Installed Codecs, Analyze … Read more

Bleacher Report, one of the largest sports news sites on the Web, was acquired today by Turner Broadcasting System.

The San Francisco-based startup focuses on delivering targeted sports news to about 10 million unique users a month. But unlike many sites whose content is written by a limited in-house staff, Bleacher Report relies on a wide network of mainly volunteer contributing writers around the country and the world who are passionate about the teams they love and who pen opinion and reaction pieces at a heavy pace in exchange for a prestigious slot on the site.

Terms of the deal … Read more