Your Complete Infosource…

Chances are you’ve heard of graphene transistors before, and that’s because the technology’s touted as capable of one day replacing silicon.  IBM Research has just overcome one of the biggest roadblocks in getting to that point, who claims to have opened a “bandgap” for carbon-based graphene field-effect transistors (FETs),

“Graphene doesn’t naturally have a bandgap, which is necessary for most electronic applications,” said IBM Fellow Phaedon Avouris. “But now we can report turnable electrical bandgaps of up to 130meV for our bi-layer graphene FETs. And larger bandgaps are certainly feasible.”

Avrouis says this latest breakthrough swings the door wide open for the future use of graphen in digital electronics and optoelectronics devices.

Get all the geeky details here.

Ready or not, six-core computing is coming, and it’s coming from both sides of the tracks. We all know about Intel’s plan to move to six-core chips, which will start with the Core i7 980X, a pricey processor (think at least $1,000) designed for socket 1366 systems. Look for this one to debut around the end of March.

But AMD also has plans to compete in the six-core sector and, according to news and rumor site DigiTimes, will launch three six-core desktop chips under its new Phenom II x6 1000T series in May 2010. These will consist of the Phenom II X6 1075T, 1055T, and 1035T, each of which is being built on a 45nm manufacturing process.

Coinciding with AMD’s six-core parts will be a couple of new chipsets, the 890FX (RD890) and 890GX (RS880D).

No official word on pricing from either side just yet.

It doesn’t matter that the newly announced Apple iPad tablet won’t be available for another two months (three months for the 3G models), vendors have no intention of waiting to cash in on what’s destined to be a hot selling product.

Take iLuv, for example, who on Thursday unveiled a new line of colorful cases and sleeves. For $20, the company is selling water resistant neoprene sleeves for the iPad available in a variety of colors and graphic designs, but that’s not all. iLuv has whipped up an assortment of iPad products, including a line of silicone cases ($25), flexi-clear cases with dot wave patterns ($30), ultra-thin cases with Tatz graphics ($35), fabric cases, leather cases, protective films, and more. Check out their full line of iPad accessories here.

iLuv isn’t the only one ready to cash in on the iPad craze. Kroo also recently announced a variety of iPad cases under the company’s Melrose, Glove, Envelope, Milan, and Cube series.

As we get closer to March 27th, the day the iPad becomes available, expect to see a lot more companies come out of the woodworks toting their Apple tablet wares.

Don’t count Nintendo president Satoru Iwata among the Apple faithful ready to snatch up an iPad as soon as it becomes available. Judging by the majority of reader comments in our news coverage earlier this week, Iwata’s as unimpressed with the tablet as the rest of you.

“It was a bigger iPod touch,” Iwata said. “There were no surprises for me.”

Iwata, who one could argue knows a thing or two about tech trends, is equally dispassionate about the concept of 3D gaming, so it’s probably safe to say you won’t be seeing Super Mario jump out of your TV set anytime soon.

“I have doubts whether people will be wearing glasses to play games at home. How is that going to look to other people?,” Iwata said at a Tokyo hotel.

Probably no sillier than Alec Baldwin waving around a Wii remote in this SNL sketch.

Speaking of motion controls, Iwata put to rest speculation in the Japanese media by denying rumors Nintendo is working on a DS-equipped motion sensor similar to the one used with the Wii, while adding that the company is not working on a Wii upgrade for high-definition television sets.

Forget about over-the-top aesthetics and loud color schemes, MSI is having no part of it, at least not with the latest entries to its Classic series notebooks. Instead, MSI’s new CX420 and CR420 keep it relatively simple with an “exclusive Cross-Hatch Color Film Print patterning” the company claims gives them a “fashionable appearance.”

Looks aside, it’s what’s on the inside of these 14-inch notebooks that count, and it all begins with Intel’s Core i5 platform. The CX420 also sports up to 4GB of DDR3 800 or 1066 memory, ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5470 graphics with a 1GB frame buffer, up to 500GB of HDD storage, a 4-in-1 card reader, 1.3MP webcam, 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, 10/100/1000 Ethernet LAN, 6- or 9-cell battery, and Windows 7 Home Premium

The CR420 boasts an almost identical spec sheet, except the built-in graphics share the frame buffer with system memory, and the onboard Ethernet LAN tops out at 10/100.

No word yet on pricing or availability.

We don’t want to jump the gun here, but we think there just might be something to this whole “Steam” business after all
.
As of today, more than 25 million Steam accounts have been created – of which, 10 million are decked out with customizable profiles. The long and short of it: there are still plenty of hardcore PC gamers, so long as you know where to look.

Naturally, then, Steam’s overall sales were up 205 percent in 2009, which – while we have no concrete numbers – probably translates roughly to “heaps upon heaps of cash” for all involved.

“Steam turned five years old in March 2009,” said Valve’s Gabe Newell. “With the introduction of each new platform feature released over the years — such as the Steam Community, Steam Cloud, and Steamworks — we’ve seen corresponding growth in account numbers, concurrent player numbers and developer support for the platform.”

A toast to Steam! Without it, PC gaming might well have dried up altogether by now. Or – worse – we could all be using Games For Windows Live. Dun-dun-dun!

There are a few signature characteristics of Call of Duty games—at least, the ones developed by series-creator Infinity Ward. First, the games feel real. The story unfolds as you play through a conflict as a few normal soldiers—regular guys on the ground who find themselves thrust into extraordinary events. They aren’t supermen. The campaigns are plausible, even if they’re fictionalized or set in the near future, reinforcing the feeling that the experience could take place in the real world. The third characteristic is that there’s usually a deep, engaging multiplayer experience thrown in the game for free. Unfortunately, in this outing, Infinity Ward whiffed on all three counts, much to our dismay.

Let’s start with the seven-hour single-player campaign. Instead of playing as normal grunts in this year’s entry, you end up playing as junior varsity supermen—an American soldier who’s always in the wrong place at the wrong time and the protégé of one of the characters you played in the first Modern Warfare. While none of the characters you play are named Jor-El, they’re a long way from the untrained Russian conscript who was handed a single clip and chained to the guy with the rifle at Stalingrad in the first Call of Duty. This creates a sense of unreality that’s reinforced by the game’s ludicrous plot twists and completely unbelievable characters. (Warning, spoilers appear in the next paragraph!)

There’s good news, and there’s good news in the latest leaked figures on Kindle ownership. While Amazon is a bit tight-lipped on the subject, with Jeff Bezos only admitting to “millions of people” owning Kindles, TechCrunch is reporting the number of those millions to be three.

Michael Arrington, who’s checked with this “amazingly accurate” sources, reports that the three million number was hit sometime in December, before the release of the global Kindle, and Amazon’s “free” Kindle offer.

Why double-good news? First, because this gives Amazon a distinct early market presence, which can have a snowball effect. (If all you see are Kindles, why by a Nook?) Second, because Amazon might well need this presence to weather the introduction Apple’s iPad into the market. For no other reason than its cachet value, the iPad will sell, and when the initial frenzy is over Kindle has a good chance of still being there.

There’s an old saying about a fool and his money. The saying doesn’t indicate, however, just how many fools there are, or how many of them use the Internet. According to the Dutch investigation firm Ultrascan, there’s a lot: 8,503 across 152 countries, who collectively lost $9.3 billion in 2009 alone.

And this is just sad–the figure doesn’t capture all fraud on the Internet, just that associated with Advance-Fee Frauds (AFFs), better known as the 419 or Nigerian scam. This fraud has been running since there’s been an Internet, and despite being well publicized (with victims rightfully ridiculed for their foolishness), it persists. It’s estimated that $41 billion has been lost to date. Even more shocking–its a growth industry, expanding some five percent per year. (From 2008 to 2009 it jumped an astonishing 48 percent: from $6.3 billion to $9.3 billion.)

Ultrascan says the scam continues to work because its good at finding fresh fools. The U.S. and Europe fool markets are (almost) tapped out, so scammers are moving into virgin fool markets, in countries such as India, China, South Korea, and Vietnam.

Ultrascan isn’t hopeful the scam will go away anytime soon. Law enforcement, it concludes, is too “feeble” to effectively combat it. And, it appears, there’s no limit to the number of fools signing up for Internet access.

Email goes back a long way. And so too, perhaps, do your archives. If you happen to be one of those obsessive savers of email, then Google’s newly announced Email Uploader might just be of interest to you.

If you’ve got a lot of email history odds are it’s in a number of different formats. Putting it all into a single format, and in a single location, would be a boon, especially if you have the need to dredge back through them from time-to-time. The Email Uploader lets you “push your archives” up to your Google Apps email account, where they’ll float away on the cloud until you need them. And, as an added bonus, you’ll be able to access them anywhere you can get on the Internet.

The Email Uploader for Windows, however, is limited to moving your Outlook archives (2003 and greater) up to the cloud. The Mac client, on the other hand, will let you load archives from Apple Mail, Eudora, and Thunderbird. And, Google warns us, this will only work for a Google Apps email account–not for gmail.com or googlemail.com accounts.