According to Flurry Analytics, a total of 6.8 million iOS and Android devices were activated worldwide on Christmas Day — that’s a 353-percent increase from Christmas Day 2010. Google’s Andy Rubin claims that 3.7 million Android devices were activated on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Based on those two numbers, its speculated that the total number of iOS activations on December 25 was at least 4.2 million. Needless to say, Apple saw a very lucrative holiday season.

To some degree, GameStop’s holiday season in regards to iOS devices was just as lucrative. According to the retailer, the current trade-in program — which provides up to $180 for an iPod Touch, up to $300 for an iPhone and up to $400 for an iPad — has exceeded the company’s expectations. However the drawback to this program is that iOS owners can’t get cash for their used device — they receive in-store credit instead.

“We expect to see strong post-holiday traffic as customers trade in older models that were replaced by gifts,” stated GameStop president Tony Bartel without providing actual pre-Christmas trade-in unit numbers. The company expects to continue to expand the availability of GameStop refurbished devices for sale in select stores and online.

GameStop’s iOS trade-in program began back in September and has since seen “strong consumer enthusiasm for the program.” Naturally consumers can also purchase pre-owned iOS products like the 8 GB iPhone 3G or $149.99, the 16 GB iPhone 4 for $369.99, an original 32 GB iPad Wi-Fi only bundle for $424.99 and a 32 GB iPod Touch Gen 3 for $189.99. The 1 GB iPod Shuffle Gen 2 costs a mere $19.99.

GameStop also provides a load of Android-based tablets too like the 7-inch Acer Iconia, the Asus Eee Pad Transformer and Transformer Prime and the Samsung Galaxy Tab. As of this writing, the sub-$400 tablets are all sold out.

Researchers at Purdue University found that arrays of plasmonic nanoantennas can be used to manipulate the phase, a wave shape, of light as it propagates. The scientists now believe that they have found a path that could enable more powerful microscopes, telecommunications and computers. Specifically, the discovery is expected to have effects on technologies for “steering and shaping laser beams for military and communications applications, nanocircuits for computers that use light to process information, and new types of powerful lenses for microscopes.”

The research builds on a previous modification how scientists have described how light reflects and refracts or bends while passing from one material into another, which is referred to as Snell’s law. Each material has its own refraction index and all natural materials show positive refraction indexes. However, Purdue’s nanoantennas can change the refraction and even achieve negative angles.

“Importantly, such dramatic deviation from the conventional Snell’s law governing reflection and refraction occurs when light passes through structures that are actually much thinner than the width of the light’s wavelengths, which is not possible using natural materials,” said Vladimir Shalaev, scientific director of nanophotonics at Purdue’s Birck Nanotechnology Center. “Also, not only the bending effect, refraction, but also the reflection of light can be dramatically modified by the antenna arrays on the interface, as the experiments showed.”

According to the scientists, the nanoantennas feature V-shaped structures that are made of gold and are placed on top of a silicon layer. The antennas are 40 nm wide. Shalaev said that they are able to transmit light through an ultrathin “plasmonic nanoantenna layer” that is about 50 times smaller than the wavelength of light it is transmitting. “This ultrathin layer of plasmonic nanoantennas makes the phase of light change strongly and abruptly, causing light to change its propagation direction, as required by the momentum conservation for light passing through the interface between materials,” Shalaev said.

SOURCE via Purdue University

TechPowerUp received a “leaked” presentation that allegedly details Intel’s Sandy Bridge-EP platform, along with early performance numbers.

Intel is taking its newly launched Core i7 Sandy Bridge-E platform to the enterprise market with a new line of Xeon processors. Intel’s new enterprise variations include the Sandy Bridge-EN and Sandy Bridge-EP. The Sandy Bridge-EN is designed for high-density, low-power servers, while the Sandy Bridge-EP is designed for high-performance servers and workstations. The Sandy Bridge-EP is multi-socket capable platform.

Read more…

Amazon’s Kindle Fire has been a huge seller this holiday season, mainly because of its low price tag. With the majority of tablets out there going for upwards of $350, a $199 offering is an attractive option for many. Of course, there’s also the fact that the Amazon Fire runs on a customized Android 2.3 Gingerbread OS, so many are hoping they can snag themselves this cheap $199 Android-based ereader and then hack it to run a stock version of Android. However, it’s unlikely new Kindle Fire users hoping for just that anticipated that the device would be hacked to run an early version of Ice Cream Sandwich, which most Android users are still waiting on.

Boy Genius Report reports that Kindle Fire users now have access to an unofficial Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich update thanks to the members of xda-developers. Forum members recently announced that they had succeeding in getting a “pre-alpha” build of Android 4.0 running on Amazon’s beefed up ereader tablet. Though users installing the update will lose all of Amazon’s special Android customizations, those who purchase the tablet with the intention to update to a more traditional form of Android probably won’t be too disappointed. That said, if you do decide to go ahead with this modification, know that this pre-release version isn’t exactly bug-free and there are some issues to be ironed out. With that said, head on over to xda-developers to read up on the hacking process.

The document, filed in 2007, describes a networked environment of devices and is a step beyond the WoL (Wake on LAN (Local Area Network)) feature. In an environment of at least three devices, where on device is requesting data from a second device that is turned off, there is a third device that will is capable of determining that state and switch on a computing device on demand. The benefit of such an environment may be reduced power consumption as WoL device never can be entirely turned off and will always consume power.

According to Intel, the feature of “powering on devices via intermediate computing device” not only applies to enterprise scenarios, but also home environments where “devices coupled to a network may act as distributed media storage and playback with reduced power consumption when such devices are not in use.” The power-on message is supported to be transmitted via wired and wireless signals over local and wide-area networks.

While Intel remains blurry about the exact technologies and protocols being used – the patent refers to virtually any networked computing environment and their data transfer protocols – the company specifically notes that the power-on feature may be built into processors and other circuits, logic units, or devices within the system. The actual data transfer takes place “via a point-to-point (PtP) interface using PtP interface circuits, respectively.” The microprocessor would include a high speed (e.g., general purpose) I/O bus channel in some embodiments of the invention to facilitate communication with various components (such as I/O device(s)),” the patent states.

SOURCE via USPTO

Zalman’s newest line of solid state drives, the F1-series, is slated for launch tomorrow in Japan. The F1 Series SSDs utilize a 2.5-inch form-factor SATA 6 Gb/s interface. The drive is based on the SandForce SF-2281 controller with multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash memory. Its available in capacities of 60 GB, 120 GB and 240 GB. Pricing is listed at 11,980 JPY (US $153) for the 60 GB, 19,800 JPY ($254) for the 120 GB, and 39,980 JPY ($513) for the 240 GB model. In addition, the drive has support for TRIM, NCQ, AES-128/256, SMART and is AHCI mode optimized.

The F1 Series performance offers read speeds of up to 560 MB/s, and up to 530 MB/s write speeds. The 60 GB and 120 GB models offer 4K random write performance of 30,000 IOPS and the 240 GB model offers 45,000 IOPS. Zalman has provided a speed comparison chart on the new F1 Series against “General” but isn’t kind enough to list was the “General” drive is. Based on the number listed, “General” looks to be your standard SandForce SF-2281 controller. Zalman is boasting its performance seen in incompressible data transfers most commonly used by audio, video and photography professionals. Read more on the F1 Series at its product page.

The current state of performing backups for Windows Phone is far from ideal, although a new job posting from Microsoft suggests that a better solution may be coming to the smartphone platform in its next major software release. According to a job posting from the monolith in Redmond, the company is seeking a talented employee to join its Windows Phone Backup, Migrate and Restore team. The listing goes on to state, “Our goal is to ensure that no matter if someone loses their phone, drops their phone in a lake … a user can quickly and seamlessly get their phone back to a good state.” Whether this involves backup to the cloud, or simply more robust features within the Zune software is never explicitly stated, although Microsoft does suggest it aims to leapfrog the competition in this arena. Not a moment too soon, either.

SOURCE via Microsoft