World's thinnest notebook!

Apple announced the MacBook Air which boasts of being the slimmest notebook around. The laptop measure only .16-inches and is slim enough to slip into a manila envelope. The lappie features a full-size keyboard and LED-back lit 13.3-inch display with built-in iSight. It also sports a new larger track pad that supports multi-touch gestures. Similar to the interface of the iPhone where you can pinch in or pan out, the MacBook Air’s track pad allows you to do the same, it even allows you to rotate images with two fingers, and move windows with a flick. Apple was able to contain the size by using the same 1.8-inch 80GB drive that's in the iPod classic.
However the64GB SSD is optional. So far so good, but on the flip side just like an iPod, you can't just crack it open to replace the hard drive, memory or even battery. On full charge the batter will last you five hours. Also the thing doesn’t sport an Ethernet port either.
Apple MacBook Air steers clear of optical media, but there's a separate external you can snap up for $99. The laptop also features something called the Remote Disk that'll let the Air get data off the optical drive in any PC or Mac running the Remote Disk software. Pricing starts at $1799 (Rs. 71,960/-) and the Air will be shipping in two weeks.
Source: http://www.newlaunches.com

Improved Lithium-ion batteries coming soon...

Stanford University researchers have found a way to use silicon nanowires to give rechargeable lithium-ion (Li-Ion) batteries--used in laptops, iPods, video cameras, and mobile phones--as much as 10 times more charge. This potentially could give a conventional battery-powered laptop 40 hours of battery life, rather than 4 hours.
The new batteries were developed by assistant professor Yi Cui and colleagues at Stanford University's Department of Materials Science and Engineering.
"It's not a small improvement," Cui said. "It's a revolutionary development."
Citing a research paper they wrote, published in Nature Nanotechnology, Cui said the increased battery capacity was made possible though a new type of anode that utilizes silicon nanowires. Traditional lithium ion batteries use graphite as the anode. This limits the amount of lithium--which holds the charge--that can be held in the anode, and it therefore limits battery life.
Silicon anodes have the "the highest theoretical charge capacity" according to Cui's paper, but they expand when charging and shrink during use: a cycle that causes the silicon to be pulverized, degrading the performance of the battery. For 30 years, this dead end stumped researchers, who poured their battery life-extending energy into improving graphite-based anodes.
Cui and his colleagues looked at this old problem and overcame it by constructing a new type of silicon nanowire anode. In Cui's anode, the lithium is stored in a forest of tiny silicon nanowires, each with a diameter that is a thousandth of the thickness of a sheet of paper. The nanowires inflate to four times their normal size as they soak up lithium, but unlike previous silicon anodes, they do not fracture.
Source: CNET News

Is Half Life 3 coming...?

During a recent press briefing at Valve HQ, Gabe Newell revealed that they are planning to develop Half-Life 3 with Half-Life 2 female NPC Alyx as a playable character.
Definitely better than Crysis in graphics and if it is a fake this guy deserves a job in Valve Software.
These are samples they send to potential investors. Screen shots taken from a real time engine demo that is being produced for Half-Life 3 and other next gen games. The engine name is currently unknown, but more info will probably surface when these get spread around more...