New research out of the University of Manchester in Britain appears to herald the imminent creation of the Cylon race.It appears the structure for computer processors will switch from silicon to carbon. Just like people.It’s not news that graphene (carbon in sheets an atom thick) conducts electricity exceptionally well. But it needs to insulate as well, and until recently, it wasn’t clear it could do the job. The university’s research showed graphene can be modified to insulate. What does that mean? It means

ATI has just released Catalyst 9.1 for Windows Vista, Windows XP and Linux platforms on http://ati.amd.com/support/driver.html. This software suite includes Radeon display driver 8.573 and full OpenGL 3.0 extension support. It also fixes numerous bugs and one bug fix that I am happy to see that when playing Picture-in-Picture on a DVD with PowerCinema or PowerDVD the system no longer halts! That is one of 24 fixes for Vista users that is highlighted in the release notes, so be sure to update!

Resolved The Following Issues for Windows Vista and Windows XP Operating Systems

• Move to Monitor option does not work for some Open GL application
• Playing back MPEG2 files may fail to respond when task switching between
  virtual desktops in extended desktop mode
• Restoring to factory default, Catalyst Control Center may become unresponsive when multidesktop is enabled
• Catalyst Control Center: display index number are not the same as Displays
  Manager in Graphics Settings
• Catalyst Control Center: Some Catalyst text labels may be missing General
  Settings Option under Windows Traditional Chinese
• Catalyst Control Center: System may become unresponsive when uninstalling
  Hydravision package with all HV aspects checked in multi adapter configurations
• Catalyst Control Center: Enabling “Enable Desktop Manager” and “Enable
  Multi Desktop” will cause the following to be displayed in the Windows Task
  Manager HydraDM64 and HydraMD64
• Catalyst Control Center: Preparing Help dialog window will come up in
  English on other localized Windows operating systems
• About Catalyst Control Center window may display some text corruption,
  when launched from the system tray
• Catalyst Control Center stops working when skin is changed to Quicksilver

We’ve all heard it before — “turn that music down, or you’ll lose your hearing!” According to a European Union scientific body, said phrase has never been truer. According to new data released this week by the EU Scientific Committee on Emerging and Newly Identified Health Risks (what a mouthful!), up to ten million young Europeans are “in danger of damaging their hearing by playing their MP3 personal music players too loud.” Rather obviously, the study found that “listening to MP3 players and other personal

We’ve all heard it before — “turn that music down, or you’ll lose your hearing!” According to a European Union scientific body, said phrase has never been truer. According to new data released this week by the EU Scientific Committee on Emerging and Newly Identified Health Risks (what a mouthful!), up to ten million young Europeans are “in danger of damaging their hearing by playing their MP3 personal music players too loud.” Rather obviously, the study found that “listening to MP3 players and other personal

Speculation regarding Windows Mobile 6.5, which is expected to debut at MWC next month, is fast and furious.  And how best to put speculation to rest than with screenshots of the upcoming mobile OS?

We’ve seen some screenshots of WinMo 6.5 over the past few days, and now we have a few more thanks to the friendly folks at the XDA Developers Forum.

The new screenshots show the updated Today Screen, the new honeycomb Programs shortcuts menu and a couple of screen grabs of IE Mobile 6. Sadly, there’s still no hint as to what the rumored Zune media interface will look like, so we’ll have to wait on that one.

More Screenshots:

At this year's Consumer Electronics Show, St. Louis-based Energizer announced that they would be releasing Zinc Air (Zn-O2) Prismatic batteries. This morning a package arrived from Energizer, and inside the metal display case was a real Energizer PP355 Zinc Air Prismatic 1.4V battery! Read on to see what makes this battery special in one of the first hands-on looks at the Zinc Air Prismatic Battery.

Save, transfer and export 4BG of data from you mobile digital devices (Cellphones, Digital Cameras). This deal ends Tuesday at 12:00pm ET.

Acer’s 8.9-inch Aspire One was perfectly suitable for those scouting one of the smallest netbooks on the market, but Acer realized that not everyone wants a machine that’s small enough to slide into the average cargo pocket. To that end, the company is planning to release a 10-inch version in the not-too-distant future. We’ve learned that the 10-inch Aspire One will eventually arrive with Windows XP, a 160GB hard drive, a 1,024 x 600 resolution display, 1GB of RAM, a 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor and a three cell

At this year’s Macworld, Apple announced iTunes was (finally) going DRM-less. However, if you wanted to remove the DRM from your pre-existing iTunes library, it was all or nothing. Proving that they do listen , Apple has changed things, and you can now upgrade your music to iTunes Plus (AKA DRM-free) one song at a time. If you go to the iTunes Plus upgrade page via the Upgrade to iTunes Plus link on the iTunes Store’s Home Page, there’s a Buy All button for a one-step upgrade, or you can click Buy buttons next

An effort to delay the February 17 deadline for a nationwide switch to digital television failed in the U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday after Republicans blocked the move.

The legislation is backed by President Barack Obama and already passed the U.S. Senate. However, it failed to gain the required two-thirds support in the House under special rules adopted for the vote. More than one million people are on a waiting list for $40 government coupons to subsidize the cost of converter boxes needed by those with older televisions. The agency that runs the program ran out of coupons earlier this month.