Thunderbolt to strike first PCs from April 2012

Intel's Thunderbolt I/O technology will hit the PC market in April 2012.
The super-fast next generation data transmission tech is currently only found in certain models of Apple's iMac and MacBook lines.
But according to Digitimes, Intel is ready to start spreading some in-out lovin' in time for the release of its new 22nm Ivy Bridge processors, due in April.
Intel has plenty of motivation to start the roll-out of Thunderbolt into the PC market. It has fierce competition in the data-transmission wars in the form of USB 3.0, another next-gen I/O tech which Intel itself is supporting in Ivy Bridge.
So to avoid USB 3.0 being given an even bigger head start, it certainly makes sense to pack Thunderbolt up with its lunchbox and PE kit and send it off to PC school without delay.
Both I/O technologies offer transfer speeds far in excess of what USB 2.0 is capable of (USB 3.0 is ten times faster, Thunerbolt is twice as fast again) but the beauty of Thunderbolt is that any one machine would only need one port.

Meet Twine, a Magic Box That Can Control Your Home

    This little programmable device will tweet messages, send text messages or email when the toast has popped up, when the laundry is done, when the basement gets flooded -- whatever you tell it to do.




   Eventually everything we own will have the ability to communicate with us. But until then, we're left going on vacation wondering if a burner on the stove is still turned on, or if the washing machine may have sprung a leak while we're out at the movies. Heck, it would be nice if we received a text message stating that the clothes finished drying or if a meal finally heated up in the microwave.
Now it's a possibility thanks to Twine. In short, this block-shaped wireless gadget will connect any device to the cloud and allow the end-user to quickly set parameters for messaging. For instance, a user could attach it to a beam in the basement and program it to send a warning via Twitter or SMS if water begins to flood the area. It can even be attached to a washing machine and programmed to alert the user when the washing cycle is complete.
According to KickStarter which is currently hosting the Twine project, the device measures a mere 2.5-inches squared and contains Wi-Fi connectivity, internal and external sensors, and two AAA batteries that "keeps it running for months." An integrated browser-based web app called Spool, seen below, allows the user to program the device with "human-friendly rules" without the need for programming knowledge. It's even customizable, allowing users to attach additional sensors for customized apps.

Memory Companies Creating Next-Gen Security for Flash

Five companies have banded together to develop content protection technology for downloading and streaming HD media.

Five well-known companies have banded together to collaborate on a new content protection technology for flash memory devices.

Under what they call the "Next Generation Secure Memory Initiative," Panasonic, Samsung, SanDisk, Sony and Toshiba will start preparing for licensing and promotion of high-definition security for SD cards and embedded memory used in devices like tablets and smartphones. This new security measure will be able to protect HD content through the use of unique ID (identification) technology for flash memory, and "robust" copy protection based on public key infrastructure.

Google Chrome Uses Graphics Card to Accelerate SVG, CSS

 Google has just added a new flag in its Chromium 18 builds that extends the browser's hardware acceleration feature.

Vector-based SVG graphics as well as CSS filters are now accelerated via the GPU and can be activated via chrome://flags in a recent nightly build. The feature is mainly for developers as there are very few websites that could take advantage of accelerated CSS filters.
Chromium supports SVG and CSS acceleration on Mac, Windows, Linux, and Chrome OS. Additional experimental GPU acceleration features include GPU accelerated painting as well as GPU compositing on all pages. We were not able to determine any performance gains as those new features appear to be unstable and produced crashes in HTML5 benchmarks such as WebViz.
IE9 was the first browser that introduced SVG acceleration with the first platform preview of IE9 in March of last year.