Coming up on the PC menu today is an update from Advanced Micro Devices for the Catalyst driver set. You lucky folks who've managed to nab a Radeon HD 4850 or a 4870 recently would be happy to hear this, because the driver engineers at ATI have really squeezed more performance from your boards via optimizations. Check out what the hardware enthusiasts have after updating their video drivers.

Here's one spy plane that would make a real cool Autobot (or Decepticon, come to that): the US Air Force Research Lab has come up with a plan for a small spy plane to recharge its batteries from power lines. And since it's a spy plane, it can also "morph" to look like... well... something that isn't a plane so that anyone who'd spot it would think it's... something that isn't a plane that's perched on a power line. More in the full article.

Advance Micro Devices, Inc. or AMD has just announced that it's expanding its line of TV Wonder products. This time AMD seeks to turn your ordinary PC into a HDTV multimedia system with new Tuner equipment called TV Wonder 650 Combo.

The ATI TV Wonder 650 Combo USB allows users to watch and record off-air Digital TV and HDTV, unencrypted Digital TV (ClearQAM) cable programming, analog TV, and lets you listen to FM broadcasts with two tuners included in the set. It sells for US$ 149 in NewTek stores found in Best Buys across North America. Wonder 600 PCI and TV Wonder 600 PCI Express TV tuners break new ground by offering high-quality ClearQAM at the affordable price of US$ 99.

Windows Media Center bundled with Windows Vista Home Premium and Windows Vista Ultimate easily recognizes the ATI TV Wonder and hybrid combo TV tuner solutions for ease of use to users of all skill levels.

"AMD’s TV Wonder family makes HDTV multimedia PCs a reality," says NewTek EVP Michael Innes. "The ATI TV Wonder 650 Combo USB and ATI TV Wonder 600 series deliver exceptional performance at a great price for PC owners who want to experience HDTV in their home, office or dorm room. "

The AMD TV Wonder comes along with the Catalyst software set which gives owners a big screen TV interface and advanced electronic programming instructions to give buyers the most out of their money.

Ever felt the need to store your files somewhere where the sun don't shine? We have just the solution for you, and no, it doesn't involve sticking stuff in parts of the human anatomy where the sun really doesn't shine. We're talking about gothic-looking dog tags with 2GB Sony Micro Vault USBs stowed inside them.

These dog tags by phone customizer Olinari are made with silver, and are embellished with ornate fleur-de-lis designs and other related emblems. The designs themselves do add a touch of mystery to the files that you keep in the Sony Micro Vault, lending the wearer of the dog tag a mysterious aura about him.

Olinari's dog tag's do come at a price, though. Pricing starts at US$ 349, and if ever you're interested in nabbing any of these works of art they'll be available starting this fall. Now that's gotta be the smartest bling ever!

   
  

Korean company Plezo has announced the launch of its new PMG-250 mp3 player. Now, while new mp3 players are always popping up, the PMG-250 does have an ace up its sleeve: it supports video game emulation.

According to the company's product page for the PMG-250, it can emulate NES, Mega Drive, and Game Boy Color games. It's a bit bigger than a Game Boy Micro and features a 2.5-inch LCD screen, dual speakers, and runs on Amtel's ARMCORE 9 CPU. The PMG-250 also has SD Card and USB support.

As for mp3 support, the PMG-250 offers playback of mp3, wma, wav, adpcm and pcm formats. If we got the translation right, it can also play avi videos as well as let users view images. The suggested retail price for the Plezo PGM - 250 is KRW 169,000 (US$ 182).

 

There's strength in numbers. This bit of wisdom has been proven time and again by bees and ants - those social animals that pack a lot of punch in crowds of themselves, albeit being tiny as individuals. At the University of California in Berkeley, electrical engineers bank on this idea by making flea-bots that could make an impact in swarms.

The collective term for the swarm of flea-bots is Smart Dust. It's supposed to be composed of flea-sized two-legged robots that could jump up to 30 times their size. Such groups of miniscule bots could be used to look for survivors in a rubble after an earthquake, or create networks of distributed sensors for detecting chemical substances, for example.

A team of electrical engineers at UC Berkeley are hard at work in pursuit of their Smart Dust dream. Former grad student Sarah Bergbreiter leads the way in developing autonomous robots fabricated by the same technology used to make integrated circuits. Currently, the prototypes are these solar-powered microbots 8.5 mm long and less than 4 mm wide. MEMS (micro-electromechanical systems) is the key to the microbots' locomotion.

To put it simply, the microbots move through a method similar to the way a person climbs a ladder, repeatedly engaging a shuttle that pulls a flea leg forward and then engages it again to move it a bit more. There are plans of making the microbots smaller and integrating wings on them, but these will come later.

We've always thought of robots as big, lumbering machines. It's a novel idea to come up with a group of tiny robots that could still function after one of them fails.