I have never been a believer of measuring the greatness of a movie in terms of gross box office sales. One billion US dollars in gross box office ticket sales in 2009 has an entirely different meaning compared to a decade back. For instance, “Gone with the Wind”, a movie shown in 1939 grossed 390 million dollars. Do you know how much that’s worth in 1939? Titanic, another James Cameroon movie, grossed 1.8 billion USD a decade back when ticket prices cost 4.59 USD.

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I’ve just read that Nvidia and Acer has announced a partnership that produces an amazingly small PC. Small enough to carry around yet powerful enough to play games such as Call of Duty 4 and Sim City 5. The Acer AspireRevo product uses Nvidia’s ION graphics chip that offers graphics performance that is said to be 5-10 times faster than traditional PC’s with integrated graphics.

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Intel has announced that it will be investing $7 Billion in US manufacturing facilities in a 2 year span. The facilities will feature state-of-the-art 32 nanometer chip fabrication. In line with the creation of the 32 nanometer facilities, Intel will be demoing a 32nm processor, dubbed as Westmere, during a press conference in Washington DC. The 32nm technology is the next step into the evolution of the current 45nm Intel processors.

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Sony has developed a new method of authentication which uses a fingers veins instead of fingerprints. According to Sony the finger vein authentication method achieves a higher accuracy compare to other biometric techniques. Sony calls the new method as “Mofiria”. The device is compact enough to be mounted on personal computers or mobile phones which makes it appealing.

Wonder if we’d see mobile phones and computers that will only respond to it’s owners in the near future. Maybe the next big thing would be mobile devices that analyzes our DNA. Read more about Sony’s press release.

A breakthrough in using LED technology to replace the household light bulb has been made by the Cambridge University. The LED bulb which is estimated to cost about $4 will last up to 60 years. The LED bulbs which is a lot smaller than the normal household tungsten bulb is 12 times more efficient. It is also eco-friendly because it doesn’t contain mercury.

What’s even better is that the new technology can reduce the proportion of electricity used for lights from 20 percent to just a mere 5 percent a year. Normally the LED bulb would have cost $500 based on the technology we currently use of creating LED lighting. The breakthrough that brought the cost down was attributed to Cambridge University’s discovery of creating the gallium nitride material needed for the LED bulbs from ordinary silicon wafers instead of the more expensive sapphire wafers. Production of the bulb is on the way and is estimated to arrive in 2 years. [via Mail Online]

You may think that the picture below maybe something that you will only see in a Star Trek movie. Well it looks like it’s going to be a reality real soon. Aptera, a start up company, has been working hard to put out it’s assembly plant the Aptera 2E. The 2E is an electricity powered vehicle that is capable of travelling 100 miles on a single charge which wll only cost about $0.50 on the pocket.

The development of such an electric powered car is being spurred in part by the competition initiated by the Progressive Automotive X Prize. The Aptera 2E maybe coming out this October and will cost somewhere between $25,000 to $45,000. The three-wheeled car design is powered by lithium-ion batteries and an electric motor. It can accelerate from 0 to 60 mph in less than 10 seconds and has a top speed of 90 mph.

Here’s a really cool way to secure your USB Flash Memory from being read by unwanted individuals. But be sure to remember to keep the key in a safe place that you would forget and nobody else will find.

Of course no matter how novel the security idea, it’s still not 100% foolproof from the professional and determined individuals so better hold on to your USB flash with your life if you don’t want anybody accessing its contents.

Checkout some other sleek concepts of a USB flash disk from Dialog05. [via Gizmodo]

I read an article at New Scientist about the recent development of a fuel cell that is only 3mm by 3mm by 1mm. Although it’s still being developed heavily, they’ve manage to make a cell that can produce 0.7 volts at 0.1 milliamp for 30 hours. Not yet mainstream for our ordinary gadgets like the mobile phone but once it gets done, we’ll definitely be seeing environment friendly energy sources that also makes our gadgets have longer lasting “juice”.

Looks like USB enabled monitors are slowly becoming mainstream as Samsung announces three LCD monitors (Samsung SyncMaster 2243QW, LD220 and LD190X) that are all equipped to be connected via the USB port of your computer. This makes it very appealing since it allows you to connect several of these monitors to your computer. Studies have shown that having several monitors in the workplace increases productivity. Who cares about the study, I want three monitors attached to my computer, period.

This Apple iTouch becomes a sidekick of a sniper. Equipped with an iPhone application for shooting. A US M110 sniper rifle has been mounted with an Apple iPod Touch. The iPod with the Bullet Flight external ballistics calculator. I guess these days military rifles are now mostly painted “desert” colors instead of “greeny” jungle chromas.

You can check out more photos at Woohome.