If you’ve noticed more spam in your inbox recently, it’s not necessarily because you are now getting more spam that you used to. In fact, spam levels are still lower now than where they were this time last year. No, the increase is just spam slowly working its way back to its “normal” levels after it significantly dropped off last November. Sadly, we were all just momentarily lulled into a sense of false hope. The party is officially over.  Credit: GoogleLast November, web hosting service provider McColo–which

Size is in the eye of the beholder. A 0.0.1 upgrade from 2.2 to 2.2.1 sounds minor, but size-of-download-wise? Whew. On Tuesday Apple released a minor update to the iPhone / iPod Touch Software, 2.2.1. The typically vague release notes say: iPhone 2.2.1 Software Update This update contains bug fixes and improvements, including the following: Improved general stability of SafariFixed issue where some images saved from Mail do not display correctly in the Camera RollFixed issue that caused some Apple Lossless

The Senate voted on Monday to delay next months transition to digital television until June 12 because some viewers would not be ready for the switch. The delay, approved unanimously on a vote by the Senate, goes to the House for a possible vote today. It is expected to pass the bill despite some objections.

Senate Commerce Chairman John Rockefeller said delaying the TV switch is the right thing to do because the United States is not yet ready to make the transition.

“The Senate acted responsibly to give the Obama administration time to attempt to bring order to a mismanaged process,” the West Virginia Democrat said in a statement.

Battered Asian memory chip makers will get some respite from oversupply in the long term after German chipmaker Qimonda filed for insolvency but the industry's recovery depends on a pick-up in demand. Makers of dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chips, used mainly in personal computers and increasingly in mobile devices and game consoles, are fighting a long supply glut and falling demand in a global downturn that is causing them to lose money on each chip they make.

Although the direct impact on chip supply would be limited, Qimonda's troubles should give investors a reason to focus on leading players, such as Samsung Electronics, Hynix Semiconductor and Elpida Memory. “The Qimonda news is like rain after a long drought,” said Jay Kim, an analyst at Hyundai Securities in Seoul. Qimonda, ranked as the world's fifth-largest memory chip maker in the second quarter of 2008, filed for insolvency on Friday as a result of huge industry price drops and a credit squeeze.

Researchers at Intel, RTI International of North Carolina, and Arizona State University have shown that it's possible to build an efficient microrefrigerator that can target hot spots on chips, saving power and space, and more effectively cooling the entire system. Their work also demonstrates, for the first time, that it is possible to integrate thermoelectric material into chip packaging, making the technology more practical than ever before. Looks like thermoelectric cooling works well on a very small scale!. The thermoelectric cooler shown below (center gold square) is attached to a copper plate that is used to spread heat away from hot spots on chips.

“People have been talking about using high-efficiency thermoelectric materials for cooling hot spots on chips for years,” says Intel manager Ravi Prasher. He says that part of the reason he and his colleagues were able to succeed is because they used a material that has shown exceptional thermal properties, and they relied on Intel's knowledge of chip packaging to build an integrated thermoelectric system that was engineered to fit within the confines of a chip's housing.

Security software company, AVG Technologies, reports that as many as 300,000 new, unique Websites launch ever day, whose sole purpose is to infect visiting computers with malware. Not only has this number jumped up from as many as 200,000 only three months earlier, but many of these sites stay active for only a short period of time–sometimes just a day or two–giving them just enough time to infect enough PCs, but then disappear before they are routed out or blacklisted.  Credit: AVG TechnologiesIt

Western Digital (WD) today announced the first 2 terabyte (TB) hard drive the worlds highest capacity drive and the latest addition to WDs popular, environmentally friendly, cool and quiet, WD Caviar Green hard drive family. This new 3.5-inch platform is based on WDs industry-leading 500 GB/platter technology (with 400 Gb/in2 areal density) with 32 MB cache, producing drives with capacities of up to 2 TB. The WD Caviar Green 2 TB is available at select resellers and distributors. MSRP for the WD Caviar Green 2 TB hard drives (model WD20EADS) is $299.00 USD.

While some in the industry wondered if the end consumer would buy a 1 TB drive, already some 10 percent of 3.5-inch hard drive sales are at the 1 TB level or higher, serving demand from video applications and expanding consumer media libraries, said Mark Geenen, President of Trend Focus. The 2 TB hard drives will continue to satisfy end users insatiable desire to store more data on ever larger hard drives.

Apple’s latest update probably brings back horrifying memories of the GeForce 8600M GT debacle that’s still plaguing previous-gen MacBook Pro owners everywhere, but rest assured, this update has absolutely nothing to do with those notoriously buggy boards.Instead, the NVIDIA Graphics Update 2009 remedies an issue where users saw erratic cursor movements when using Apple’s $99 Mini DisplayPort to Dual-Link DVI adapter (pictured) with the new line of Mini DisplayPort-enabled MacBook Air, MacBook and MacBook Pro

Late last week Western Digital briefed us on their forthcoming release of a new addition to their Caviar Green family of hard drives.  No we’re not talking some sort of exotic sushi or cracker-bound fish egg here either but rather a new, rather humongous and environmentally more friendly hard drive from WD, that can be considered an “industry first”.  Today marks the day that standard rotational media breaks the 2TB barrier.  Let’s spell that out a bit more clearly again here; T-W-O

While we've had a number of engineering sample motherboards floating around our test bench in recent weeks the ASUS M4A79T Deluxe motherboard is the first retail AMD Socket AM3 motherboard to show up at our door step. Read on to see what this upcoming motherboard is all about it as you look at some of the very first pictures of the ASUS M4A79T Deluxe motherboard to be posted online.