Boy, it has just come to my attention that, while every other student worker like me probably plays Flash-based games online, I’m usually scrounging the Internet for the next gadget steal I can make. Whether it be NewEgg‘s horrible pun “Shell Shocker“, something random at Woot!, or even what’s shaking over at Buy.com, the Internet has allowed some really great money-savers to pop up. Most of the savings to be had aren’t even dependent on seasonal pricing (read: Black Friday), so for “frugal” college students like myself, early Christmas shoppers, or bargain hunters, these websites I’m highlighting today are a godsend.

NewEgg.com
I love NewEgg. Having bought all the parts for my existing PC off of NewEgg, as well as every computer-related purchase since then, I’m pretty much sold on these guys. This web-based company (who has recently expanded to include a Canadian website, as well) is easy to navigate, keeps track of all your orders if you keep an account with them, makes it easy to get RMAs (Return Merchandise Authorization), and they ship really quickly. Their Shell Shocker promotion is also a recent addition, which provides an item on a deep discount for a limited time, much akin to…

Woot!
Woot! is a very interesting website. They do sell products over the Internet, but they aren’t a retailer in any sense that conventional shoppers would think. Selling only one product per day, the day’s featured product goes online at 12AM and is discontinued at 11:59 that night (their motto is “One Day, One Deal”). In between the time a product goes up and comes down, their main page will show the item, a description – which includes witty banter, self-depreciating humor, mocking of the product, the website, the consumer, or a mix of the three, and some text which is entirely unhelpful – all of which adds to the site’s character. On top of all of this, the prices here are astounding, but the items are short lived, so you have to pay attention. Woot! also has specials like Two-for-Tuesday: two items for the price of one (very useful when there are things like digital cameras or earmuffs), or Woot-Offs, where there are massive chains of sales in a row.

Woot! also has a number of sister sites: Shirt.Woot!, Wine.Woot!, and Sellout.Woot! The shirt website sells t-shirts, printed on American Apparel tees, with custom designs on them. Wine.Woot! sells bottles of wine, or other sophisticated things like cake samplers. It’s very difficult to describe everything that happens on Woot!, as well as all the information and products they carry, so here’s a link to their FAQ and the Wikipedia page on Woot!

Buy.com ” What’s Shakin’ “
Buy.com’s website is already a pretty good place to shop, but then I came across the items that are “shaking”. As a metric of an item’s popularity, there’s a section of items on Buy that are “What’s Shakin“. On that list are the items that have had the greatest change in sales rate (usually some of the best deals), which means there’s either been a discount, a coupon sent out, or some kind of promotion: all ways you can save money or get something extra. They’re already starting up the holiday sales promotions over at Buy, but the earlier you start, the earlier you’ll get your shopping done.

Passwird
Dealighted

The websites I’ve talked about so far are singular places to find deals; the only prices you’ll find will be at that website, but with websites like Passwird and Dealighted.com, these sites act like price aggregators (or more like savings aggregators) in that they tell you what website is offering relatively lower prices for regular MSRP. Passwird is run by a single college student, but it updates multiple times daily, and keeps track of what deals are obsolete. Dealighted, instead of being run by one person, is a collection of deals or future sale prices (a good example would be the Black Friday ads popping up on DL right now) from other websites and also deal notices that are submitted by users.

Thanks to these places, I’m already way ahead on my Christmas shopping and I know exactly where I’m camping on Thanksgiving Thursday (It’s Meijer if you need to know). And don’t forget about these places once the holiday season passes; Woot and their sister sites always have good deals. It just depends on if you want the item they’re selling at the time…

Pictures courtesy of: Woot.com, Passwird, NewEgg, All Enthusiast;

In spite of falling gas prices, energy is still a hot button topic in this election season, and General Electric has some new ideas about how to approach the issue. In a press release on Wednesday, GE announced a growing partnership with energy utilities and new line of appliances which will work in tandem to lower peak energy demand and save you, the consumer, money on your energy bills. These “Energy Management Enabled” appliances will receive control messages sent from the utility companies, which let them know when peak energy periods (and prices) have passed, allowing the hardware to schedule key tasks around cheaper kilowatt-hours. Now that we have this month’s quota for the word “energy” out of the way… While ‘smartening’ initiatives like ENERGY STAR® don’t garner much press, they’ve permeated much of the appliance market, landing in everything from water heaters to monitors to refrigerators. In spite of this, there is plenty of room for improvement: GE is looking to break in on this opening; traditional appliances have no way of determining when to perform tasks like self-cleaning or defrost and compression cycles, and so they happen periodically throughout the day. Ultimately, this means that many appliances draw energy at inopportune times.

Instead, these GE appliances are programmed to discourage using energy during peak times, which comes as a command signal through the power lines (much as the way broadband over power lines would have worked). The consumer can override this scheme, but, if need be, a dryer could be programmed to not use higher temperatures until peak energy usage has passed. Currently, only few utility companies have tiered pricing, but as initiatives such as the “Energy Management” system gains ground, more and more are considering cheaper energy prices outside the range of 3 P.M. to 7 P.M, or when energy demand is at its peak.

In order for this program to fully realize its potential, GE would require the cooperation of most utility companies. In anticipation of this, GE has already secured the support of Louisville Gas and Electric for when the new line is released in Q1 2009, and are looking to expand the partnership to more companies as 2009 approaches.

Picture courtesy of: General Electric

Apple or Linux fans, rejoice! CodeWeavers, as part of a semi-promotional stunt, semi-political gaffe, is making their catalog of CrossOver software available to everyone with a valid email address for October 28th, only! If you don’t know what CodeWeavers, with the CrossOver software, is out to do: Their mission is to make the Linux and Mac operating systems fully Windows compatible. CrossOver is an (from what I can tell, their main site has been down all day. Thanks Digg!) API-GUI that runs off the Wine source tree and allows you to run Windows-based applications. Hurry over to their website and grab your version before midnight CST (10:00 PST, 1:00 EST, 6:00 GMT) , then come back here and read up on what’s going on!

UPDATE: CrossOver is a tweaked version of the Wine program, with two different packages; a Pro package, that emphasizes stability and reliability over a longer release cycle, and a Games package, that puts maximum compatibility towards games like World of Warcraft or Steam-based games, to mention a couple.

This whole thing started when CodeWeaver’s CEO, Jeremy White, made a challenge to President Bush that if he met one of his six ‘Lame Duck‘ goals before he left office (gas drops to $2.79 a gallon, milk drops to $3.50 a gallon, U.S. jobs exceed 138 million, the Twin Cities median home price returns to $233,000 or Osama bin Laden is captured), the CrossOver software would be made free to the American people for one day only.

As gas recently hit $2.79 in St. Paul, Minnesota, he was compelled to follow up on his promise, and now you can grab the Pro suite for either platform for free. It regularly retails for $40 for the Pro version, and those that get it free through this promotion can grab a support and updates license renewal after a year for only $35.

Say what you want, you can’t argue with free software; and, if this promotion pans out, Jeremy White might just be a genius.

Picture courtesy of: CodeWeavers;

Oh, General Electric has recently unveiled an OLED printer, you say? With a machine that can print sheets of OLEDs at a time, companies like Phillips and Sony are starting to put their weight behind OLED-based products. When Sony unveiled a OLED-based flexible display at the 2008 CES, new realms of possibility were opened up. Cell phones with flexible screens, “unrollable” backlit displays, and sheet lighting all suddenly became possible.

The printer, itself, is a marvel. Housed in New York and packing the profile of a semi-trailer, it spits out 8-inch wide sheets of chemicals on a plastic and metallic sheet that light up when current is run across the film. As you can see above, it’s flexible, luminous, and shines with a beautiful blue-white glow. The next step is building a machine that can pump out feet upon feet of OLED sheeting, says head researcher Anil Duggal.

GE and other OLED manufacturers, like Osram Opto (a Siemens AG subsidiary that makes OLEDs for use in TV displays), are starting to find out, however, that a sheet-based approach is unlikely to replace the conventional incandescent light bulb or the fluorescent light socket in the near future.

Sheet lighting can be used to create new and unique fixtures and displays, but the durability of OLEDs are still in question, keeping many eager companies from making the initial investment. OLEDs wear out much quicker than a fluorescent bulb, and even the presence of atmospheric gases can cause the chemicals to deteriorate. Without addressing these problems, OLEDs may go the way of Indiglo watches.

Hopefully not; I’d love to have a display I can unroll to surf the Internet.

Pictures courtesy of: Associated Press, TechViva;

When it comes to technology, its hard to beat our Japanese brethren in things like the video game, cell phone, and handheld device markets, and it’s the fault of companies like Samsung, Sony, and Nintendo. Nintendo had a massive developer expo and showcase earlier today, and a few of the guys from “Wired” were on hand to blog about it, but if you don’t care to read timestamps, Nintendo’s big thing was announcing a new and improved Nintendo DS, dubbed the “DSi“.Completely original, right?

Though you may not hear much about this little handheld device (I know I haven’t), the DS is one of Nintendo’s most popular devices. Worldwide sales are already at nearly 80 million units, making it one of Nintendo’s best selling products (it absolutely dwarfs Wii sales). With integrated wireless communication with nearby DSes, two individual screens – one touch-screen, and backwards compatability, the DS is already a solid gaming-on-the-go platform, but the DSi is looking to improve things with a pair of inward-facing and outward-facing cameras and a new SD media card slot.

Specifications:

• Comes in white and black colors
• Thinner than the DS Lite
• Two “640×480″ cameras (0.3 megapixels each, one pointed inwards, the other outwards)
• 3.25 inch LCD screens (DS Lite had 3 inch screens)
• SD memory card slot for external storage of pictures and software
• The DSi loses backward compatability as the GBA cartridge slot will be removed
• Internal flash memory and built-in web browser
• Syncable with Nintendo Photo Channel
• Possibility of buying and storing games on DSi’s internal or SD memory

You can compare the DS Lite to the DSi here at Nintendo’s Japanese website. I wouldn’t expect much English, however, so you’re mostly limited to visual comparisons. I haven’t gotten a DS, and I’m still not sure about the viability of one for a college student like me, but the cameras and compatibility with SD memory could make a DSi pretty attractive for on-the-go people who are just looking to have some fun during that layover.

Japan’s going to get the DSi by November; rest of the world? Wait until 2009, baby.

Pictures courtesy of: Nintendo;

Reminiscent of the old Sony BMG ‘rootkit’ problems which plagued users back in 2005, Electronic Arts is facing a serious firestorm over their recently published PC game “Spore“. In particular, the issues lie with the Digital Rights Management (DRM) software that EA included with Spore. This particular iteration of DRM software, made by SecuROM, limits the number of active installations at one time to 3; this method of tracking active installations also requires a computer to be connected to the Internet to authenticate against EA’s servers, another point of contention. Now, with a number of users up-in-digital-arms and a class action lawsuit being filed in the Northern District of California against EA, they’re really starting to feel the heat.

From the lawsuit:

“What purchasers are not told is that, included in the purchase, installation, and operation of Spore is a second, undisclosed program…Although consumers are told that the game uses access control and copy protection technology, consumers are not told that this technology is actually an entirely separate, stand-alone program which will download, install, and operate on their computers, along with the Spore download. Consumers are given no control, rights, or options over SecuROM. The program is uninstallable. Once installed, it becomes a permanent part of the consumer’s software portfolio. Even if the consumer uninstalls Spore, and entirely deletes it from their computer, SecuROM remains a fixture in their computer unless and until the consumer completely wipes their hard drive through reformatting or replacement of the drive.”

The complete lawsuit (all 36 pages of it) can be found here, courtesy of Courthouse News.

Spore, which has been in development since 2000, has already sold over a million copies, but the user firestorm has created a bit of a run on the game at BitTorrent sites. Estimates are that over 500,000 copies have been downloaded already, with the number of illegal copies rising steadily. Ironically, the whole purpose of the included DRM was to restrict piracy; however, Spore will, most likely, reach the title of “Most Pirated Game” in history.

Interestingly enough, SecuROM is a Sony DADC company.

We here at PaulTech don’t condone DRM, or piracy, for that matter, but if the greater gamer consortium wants to make themselves heard, well, it seems like they’ve done a good job of that.

Picture courtesy of: Electronic Arts / Maxis;

If you’ve ever watched the “Jason Bourne” series of movies, he constantly has the CIA, INTERPOL, and other organizations following his every move. One of the ways they did this was through face-recognition software which took video feed, processed it, and compared faces which appeared in the video feed against an archived database. While, in the movie, the software never failed to recognize a face, this is rarely the case in real life. Even in ideal conditions, the best face recognition software only works well when you can control factors such as resolution or face angle. However, Pablo Hennings-Yeomans’ work over at Carnegie Mellon University may just change all that.

The biggest problem with the technology stems from the proliferation of low-resolution cameras, like those found in cell phones or lower-end security systems. As many of the facial idiosyncrasies are only distinguishable at higher resolutions. This results in choosing to use lower resolution source images, or trying to inject pixels into the video feed stills through use of super-resolution algorithms. However, Hennings-Yeomans’ method uses super-resolution algorithms and intermediate algorithms in a way that makes the distinct features of a face stick out. Hennings-Yeomans and B. Vijaya Kumar of Carnegie Mellon, and Simon Baker of Microsoft Research are presenting a paper at the IEEE International Conference on Biometrics going on later this month, canvassing the improved results when compared to traditional methods.

One quote, taken from MIT’s Write-Up on the new technology, describes Hennings-Yeomans’ work best:

“The approach shows promise, says Pawan Sinha, a professor of brain and cognitive sciences at MIT. The problem of low-resolution images and video “is undoubtedly important and has not been adequately tackled by any of the commercial face-recognition systems that I know of,” he says. “Overall, I like the work.”

Ultimately, says Hennings-Yeomans, super-resolution algorithms still need to be improved, but he doesn’t think it would take too much work to apply his group’s approach to, say, a Web tool that searches YouTube videos. “You’re going to see face-recognition systems for image retrieval,” he says. “You’ll Google not by using text queries, but by giving an image.”

Pictures courtesy of: MIT’s Technology Review;

Nikola Tesla was a genius and a cool dude; being responsible for important things like AC power, RADAR, and the Tesla Coil while scaring the pants off 19th century citizens with your electrical finesse have a tendency of doing that to you. However, some smart people have figured out how to build on his genius, switch things up, and make Tesla Coils amplify guitars, put on the obligatory light show, and synchronize with keyboards.

A Tesla Coil, in short, is a method of creating high voltage environments with (generally) low amounts of current. While they found use in wireless telegraph transmission, early power transmission experiments, and generally freaking the populace out, a majority of modern Tesla Coils are now built by enthusiasts and researchers.

So, being an electrical engineer and all, here’s a little carnival showcasing some awesome things done with Tesla Coils over the years…

Tesla Coil set to music:

Mario Brothers Tune to Tesla Coil

Mythbusters, Body Piercings, and Tesla Coils

Mythbusters has used Tesla Coils in a number of experiments; most of them involving kites, lighting, or cool light shows. However, one episode revolved around the premise that if you had a body piercing (they tested tongue rings, specifically) you’d be more susceptible to lightning strikes. While the footage is copyrighted, I can reassure you, the found that unless you have a 4 inch metal rod in your mouth, there isn’t much chance of your piercings being struck by any lightning.

HAARP

While this last one isn’t a Tesla Coil the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) stems from some of the work Nikola Tesla experimented with when he attempted to use Tesla Coils to ionize localized parts of the Earth’s atmosphere. Some say it’s a weapon of mass destruction, some say it’s a dud. I say it looks like a bunch of snowy antennas.

Now, where did I put the plans for my Weather Control Device?

Pictures courtesy of: TechEBlog;

Stack Overflow is a “collaboration-based” approach to a question and answer forum. Their stipulations are that there is no limit to experience, platform, or language; if you have software expertise, feel free to share it and gain some in the process. What Stack Overflow does is it allows for questions to be posted, and the answers to which are logged in sub-threads that are ‘voting-enabled’ for popularity, helpfulness, and anything else you as a user feel makes a logged answer helpful. It’s not unlike the way Digg or Reddit handles the posting and aggregation of news stories. It’s also supplemented by a helpful tagging system and a smooth interface, and the topics that range from “how to introduce someone to programming” to “C++ pointers” to languages like .NET and Java ensure you’ll find something you like, and it won’t take forever to do so.

I only wish I had found this when I was back in my Computer Science class…

Picture courtesy of: Stack Overflow;

While still a beta, Chrome does a number of things well for just making it out of the gate. Speed is, so far, unmatched; regardless of what web page you pick,  it will load faster, period. This is mostly the fault of Apple’s WebKit, an open-source rendering engine Google integrated into Chrome. Chrome also possesses a “process manager”, or what you could call a browser-specific task manager that keeps track of every service, tab, and process running inside the Chrome browsing environment. If your Flash-based application starts to hang, there’s no need to crash your browser, just end the process in the process manager, and you can go about your browsing.

It’s still a beta (like Gmail…), so security issues are as-yet to be determined, but curious users should be delighted by what they find. It’s by no means as versatile as Firefox, for everything Google has helped FF with, but it’s sure to drive development forward.

A download link for Chrome can be found here!

Picture courtesy of: Google;