Connect your monitors via USB and save the planet?

According to DisplayLink, a Microsoft Research study says that using two or more displays can increase productivity by as much as 50 percent. The company also notes that University of Utah researchers have shown that users of multiple displays make up to 33 percent fewer mistakes than those working on a single monitor.
Now, in its own study released Wednesday, DisplayLink says that using multiple monitors simultaneously via USB consumes less power than using them via DVI. To plug multiple monitors into one system traditionally requires that you use a discrete graphics card solution with dual DVI ports. Right away that's theoretically more power, since discrete solutions take more energy to run than integrated solutions. With DisplayLink, you'd simply be using the USB port to connect, so there would be no need for a dual DVI card and the integrated graphics would suffice.

At Interop, an IT conference and Exposition in New York this week, DisplayLink is leaning on its study results to push the energy efficiency of using DisplayLink to connect multiple monitors via USB.

In its study, DisplayLink measured the power needed for a desktop PC to run one to four LCD monitors. Two identically configured systems were used--one equipped with DisplayLink-enabled USB-to-DVI adapters and software, and another with dual-DVI discrete graphics cards (the most common type of dedicated multidisplay board). Power consumption was measured at the entry of the computer power supply to gauge total system power usage under different system loads.
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A match made in heaven: Apple's MacBook Air and Iomega's eGo Helium

Earlier this year, we took a close look at Iomega's eGo line of portable hard drives. We tested both the brown leather eGo and the camo eGo, with superb results: We liked both Iomega's Drop Guard design that protects the drives from drops up to a meter above the floor, and the quick transfer speeds.

Now, Iomega is taking the drives' aesthetic value one step further by introducing the 320GB eGo Helium. The drive is just .63 inches, and its sleek exterior casing is anodized silver to match perfectly with Apple's MacBook Air. Inside the chassis, you'll find a slim 2.5-inch portable drive--the whole device weighs a svelte 7 ounces.

The eGo Helium attaches to your computer via USB 2.0 and is powered by the USB bus so there's no need for external power. It also features the Drop Guard design for extra protection from the elements of day-to-day travel, and is preformatted for use with Apple's HFS+ file system. The drive is also compatible with Windows 2000 Professional, XP, and Vista.

We're excited to take a closer look at the device and test the read and write speeds. The other eGo drives we tested before performed very well, reading data at 19.47 megabytes per second and writing at 19.5MBps. Not bad for an external hard drive, but we'll see if the eGo Helium lives up to its ruggedized siblings.

Via Crave CNET

Don't shoot Microsoft's new Messenger

If you're an avid Windows Live Messenger user, now's the time to convince your friends to make the switch to the new Windows Live Messenger beta. If they don't, you'll be wondering what the hubbub is about.

Unveiled on Wednesday, the new beta offers a bundle of fun, fresh features, the best of which can be taken advantage of only when you're chatting with another beta user. As a beta, there are a few known bugs, and probably more to discover, but the adventurous early adopters who aren't afraid of leaving Windows' Messenger 8 behind will be rewarded with functionality that improves on basic tasks and new baubles to color the chatting experience. We've got a few complaints, too.

A field to drag-and-drop favorite contacts and the ability to create chat groups of up to 20 participants are available in the newly-designed interface, which has a much lighter look that some may see as more cramped and less defined. Changing the color and background theme (or 'scene,' as it's called here) helps--if you know where to look. A paintbrush image appears when you scroll over its hidden position in the top right corner.
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Epic's Tim Sweeney predicts future of 3D gaming

If you're a fan of those John Carmack interviews that pop up every once in a while, you'll probably enjoy the interview with Tim Sweeney over at Ars Technica. Tim is one of the co-founders of Epic Games, and also one of the creators of the technology behind the Unreal and Gears of War series. We think we even understood most of it.

The gist of the interview focuses on the future of 3D-graphics programming, but this one section we found particularly interesting:

Jon Stokes (from Ars): I'd like to chat a little bit about Larrabee and software rendering. I'm sure you're NDA'd on it, but Intel just did a pretty substantial reveal so we can talk in more detail about it. So first off, I'm wondering if you're looking at any of the Larrabee native stuff. What do you think about the prospects of this whole idea of not doing Direct3D or OpenGL, but writing directly to Larrabee's micro-OS?
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Google audio search graduates to Labs project

Google has elevated the profile of its attempt to make videos searchable through speech recognition technology, a move that portends a potentially more financially successful YouTube division.

The speech recognition technology was used in an online application that let people search political speeches launched in July, and now the Gaudi (Google Audio Indexing) project has an official interface at Google Labs.

The site's search box has instructions: "Search what the politicians are saying." The search results are presented next to a YouTube video player, and clicking each result sets the player to show the part of the video where the words were spoken. It doesn't just show speeches--a search for "bridge to nowhere" also returned the "Real Mavericks" ad from the John McCain-Sarah Palin campaign.
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