Yeah, I know. One might say I watched too much Star Trek when I was a little kid, but stuff like this just makes me really excited. During last week’s Google I/O event, the popular search giant’s annual developer conference in San Francisco, California, Google presented “a contraption it calls the “Holodeck,” for event-goers to experience. Basically, it’s a near-360 degree way to view Google Street View in fast motion, high definition video.”

But have a look and judge for yourself:

via. Guru3D.com

Initial reviews of the Microsoft Zune HD have been surprisingly positive with one review even calling the device beautiful.

Brian Lam for Gizmodo writes,
“The device is tighter and more physically beautiful than the iPod Touch and it’s got a better UI, the main menu’s scrolling so natural through the swipe gestures. There’s a little note on the side, under the volume toggle—”Hello from Seattle.” The power button is up top. The home button is nice and prominent, a bar rather than a round button on the Touch. It’s smaller. And the accelerometer is more swift in responding to repositioning; images rotate very fast.”

Take a look at the hands on video demo below…

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Zune HD Video Hands On from Gizmodo on Vimeo.

Steve Ballmer himself demonstrated to Engadget some of the new features on his Zune HD during D7.

The site has posted a gallery of their shots which picture the device, its OLED screen, and Balmer playing a Pixar movie.

Microsoft recently announced the Zune HD as its answer to the iPod touch.

“Zune HD is the first portable media player with built-in HD Radio receiver, HD video output capabilities, OLED touch screen, wi-fi and an internet browser.”

The Zune HD is expected to ship in the fall of this year.

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According to leaked reports, it looks as though AMD finally released the specs of the Radeon HD 4770, the upcoming graphics card based on the 40nm RV740 chip.

Next month will supposedly be a hot one for both Nvidia and AMD if all goes according to plan, as both companies will unleash highly anticipated graphics cards unto the market: AMD’s Radeon HD 4890 and Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 275. However, AMD has a few additional aces up its sleeve, including the forthcoming Radeon HD 4700 series based on the 40nm RV740 GPU.

Presentation screens have surfaced over on IT168.com, taken from a recent AMD presentation. One slide in particular compares the Radeon HD 4770 with Nvidia’s GeForce 9800 GT, showing superiority in both features and performance. According to AMD, the Radeon HD 4770 will provide 9.7 GFLOPS per dollar, and 12.0 GFLOPS per watt. By comparison, the 9800 GT only provides 5.1 GFLOPS per dollar and 4.8 GFLOPS per watt. Additionally, the 40nm Radeon HD 4770 utilizes GDDR5 memory (512 MB, 128-bit) and provides 1960 GFLOPs of processing power; the 65nm/55nm 9800 GT uses GDDR3 (256-bit) memory and provides 504 GFLOPs of processing power.

Additionally, the Radeon HD 4770 will offer a core clock of 750 MHz, 640 stream processes, a memory clock of 800 MHz, and a memory bandwidth of 51.2 GB/s. The card is estimated to use around 80W thanks to the 40nm manufacturing process, somewhat smaller in power consumption when compared to the 55nm Radeon HD 4850 and 55nm 4830. However, the Radeon HD 4770 will come with 826 million transistors, meaning it contains 130 million less than the 4830 and the 4850 (both with 956 million).

Although the Radeon HD 4770 looks to be that last card to ship within this half of 2009, the card is expected to retail around $99 USD. Out of the nine AMD cards set to ship within Q1 and Q2 2009, the Radeon HD 4830 is the only other card offering a $99 USD pricetag. According to the slide taken from AMD’s presentation, the HD 4870 X2 (2 GB) will retail for $399, the HD 4870 (512 MB) for $169, and the HD 4890 (1 GB) for around $260.

With nine cards hitting retail shelves during this half of the year, it’s definitely a great time to upgrade the existing graphics card. AMD offers a great selection, with cards not only addressing both the enthusiast and the performance-seekers, but consumers wanting to maintain a tight budget. Look for the affordable Radeon HD 4770 to hit retail shelves on May 4.

via. Tom’s Hardware