September
30


HP today introduced a new line of computing products aimed at making it easy for people to enjoy high-definition entertainment. In time for the holiday season, HP introduced three high-definition products based on the HD-DVD digital media format, making HP one of the first companies to announce products that deliver a high-definition experience. The products include a 17-inch widescreen diagonal HD-DVD notebook PC with a piano-black HP Imprint finish and patterned design; an HD-DVD Media Center TV PC with 7.1 surround sound; and an HD-DVD external drive for PCs - all of which can deliver the superior picture quality associated with high-definition movies. HP also introduced two home storage products that are ideal for storing high-definition movies and rich digital content such as music and photos.

The HP Media Vault, the first in a new product category for the company, is an expandable storage product that allows consumers to easily back up and share movies, music and photos across home networks. The HP Pocket Media Drive is an ultra-portable, 2.5-inch USB hard drive in 80 gigabyte (GB) and 120 GB capacities.
Via HP

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September
29


She is armed with a “chemoblaster”, looks like Lara Croft and is the heroine of a new video game designed to help kids suffering from cancer cope with the disease. Roxxi, as she is called, is the main character in “Re-Mission”, a game created by California-based HopeLab as part of a series of so-called “serious games” featured at the Games for Health conference taking place in Baltimore.”Re-Mission’s” intrepid nanobot is a challenging 3-D “shooter” that takes the player on a journey through the bodies of young patients with different kinds of cancer and blasts away at the cancer cells. The game, which came out last spring and took six years to design at a cost of 2.5 million dollars, is distributed FREE of charge to cancer patients. A clinical study involving 400 patients undergoing cancer treatment in Britain, Canada, France, Spain and the United States showed that the game helped young players cope with the disease. The secret to interactive video games designed to improve young people’s health behaviours is that patients “identify with the character, are part of the story where you have a life threat but you can do something about it,” said Debra Liebermann, a pioneer in the sector who helped create “Click Health”, whose hero is an asthmatic dinosaur.

Bruce Jarrel, deputy dean at the University of Maryland’s school of medicine, said the health sector must realize that this new generation of “serious” video games can not only be used for entertainment but also to treat patients. At BreakAway, a company that designs commercial games, notably one war game called “Austerlitz”, officials are preparing to launch “Free Dive” and “Turbo Turtle”, two games that take place underwater and are designed to help patients deal with pain.” One is a totally explorative game design with a virtual helmet for a more immersive experience; the other is more of an action game.
Via Yahoo News

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September
25


IBM Corp. and Lenovo Group, the world’s third largest computer maker, were seeking the recall of rechargeable, lithium-ion batteries purchased with ThinkPad computers. A laptop caught fire at Los Angeles International Airport this month. Consumers are being asked to return 526,000 laptop batteries made by Sony Corp because they could catch fire; the latest in a record-setting recall involving nearly 7 million computers. It is the fourth recall in recent weeks involving Sony laptop batteries.

In August, Dell asked customers to return 4.1 million batteries and Apple recalled 1.8 million batteries worldwide, warning they could catch fire. Last week, Toshiba said it was recalling 340,000 laptop batteries due to a problem that caused the laptops to run out of power.
Via Yahoo News

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