Stories by: Jason Kennedy

For a while now I've eyed the netbook/laptop market with a mixture of envy and disgust. I always scoffed at the notion of a netbook, since you couldn't do much on them and I was a my-computer-as-a-swiss-army-knife kind of nerd. I also really wanted a smaller form factor and something more portable, but until recently I couldn't have my cake and eat it too.

In this multi-part report, nerd extraordinaire Jason Kennedy will look at all sorts of fun and interesting ways to hack his CR-48 laptop. Come along for the ride, and watch his tragedies and triumphs.

If you keep track of Windows Phone 7 (I try to), you know that it’s been and on and off relationship with tethering. I’m not personally interested in a WP7 phone myself, but if I was a lack of tethering would put a serious damper in my thinking. I carry around enough gear without needing a mifi or something as well, when plenty of phones offer tethering (albiet with draconian carrier leeching) via Wi-Fi or USB. Some feel differently about it and I can see the point, but I want my phone to still be the catch-all for my mobile internet. Thanks to dfvn of XDA-Developers, WP7 users may be able to have their cake and eat it too.

When Lenovo had its recent Mod Contest, modder Boddaker submitted this gem: A Lenovo A700 IdeaCentre PC with an HD projector built in underneath. The A700 itself is an all-in-one desktop PC with a 23-inch widescreen LCD and slot-loading Blu-ray drive. The projector is attached to the bottom of the unit, so the whole thing can be used as a chalkboard projected onto a wall, among countless other things.

I have to wonder sometimes if there's a limit to where Google will go.

It seems like hackers who inatall the Android operating system on everything decided to mix it up a bit. The folks over at XDA Developers have successfully ported Ubuntu HD2 version 0.3 to the Samsung Nexus S phone. You read that correctly: They replaced a Linux-based OS (Android) with a Linux-based OS (Ubuntu).

As reported at physorg.com, University of California, Riverside physicists have made breakthroughs in developing graphene-based “spin computers”. A spin computer would allow for huge storage capacity using a fraction of the power consumption of current electronics. This is accomplished through polarization of electrons -- the spin process actually gives each a directional orientation, up or down. A spin computer would maximize usage of this state of materials to store more data, perform faster, and generate less heat than standard electronics.

The University of Cincinnati recently announced a new e-Display design, and it's a huge breakthrough for electronic devices called Electrofluidic Display Technology (EFD). Created through a collaboration between U of C, Dupont, Sun Chemical and Gamma Dynamics, it's promising excellent readability in bright sunlight, high contrast color and the ability to show high-speed content, and massively reduced power consumption.