It got me thinking after reading a few articles about the new Iphone 3GS overheating that maybe its too fast. Being fast is a really good thing, but being fast sometimes pays a price. I remember using the original Iphone for some simple web browsing and I have to say it got pretty toasty. Not to mention that the new CPU is reved up, but it also has new features such as L2 Cache. The GPU has be updated and the overall RAM has been increased. That can get pretty hot.

HTCs top of the line Touch Rose offers a 525 mhz CPU, with 256mb of system RAM. The Iphone on the other hand has managed to top that. Iphone 3GS has the same 256mb of RAM, but the CPU is an under clocked (To about 600mhz) 833mhz chip. Despite being underclocked, 75 more mhz is still a level up. Besides having a dedicated CPU, the phone also features its own dedicate graphics chip (PowerVR SGX) which adds into the heat mix.

In such a confined space, heat can be a problem. With all the components giving off their own amount heat, there isn't much that can be done to get rid of it. Usually devices use use their outer shell as a heat sink, but when held in your warm palm, there really isn't much of a way for a device to cool itself down.

So, the question today is, is the Iphone too fast? The answer is probably yes. Looking at how the Iphones have heated up, its no surprise the new phone is facing problems. The added power may be a good thing, but in a lot of cases more power = hotter. A year may not of given chips the time to become power conservative enough for such an upgrade. The CPU might of been a good upgrade, but the GPU could of waited until the next generation. It is also possible that Apple would of been better off with a slower chip instead of down clocking the one they went with. The biggest issue is that Apple chose to keep the same body, which might not provide the cooling needed for the new hardware.

A lot of people are blaming the batteries that have been put into the new phones. True, Apple has had a history of product recall due to battery problems. But that was a time when all the major companies were forced to do it. But today is a little different. Apple seems to be the only one suffering from this problem and there are plenty of phone companies offering similar phones without the same problem.

Only time will tell. In the end it might be the batteries to blame. But as far as evidence shows us today, the hardware is to blame here.

I'm not here to start a rumor and I don't have any sources telling me that the Ipod Touch 3.0 will have a camera. But over the past few days I've been using my old Ipod Touch 1.0 quite a bit and I kept thinking how much I needed to use Skype to call a friend. It made me a little frustrated my Ipod Touch 1.0 couldn't do that unlike the 2.0. So I started going over the small list of handy things my Ipod Touch 1.0 didn't have that where built into new model and it soon came to me that the new model, the 2.0, was missing something I really wanted too; a camera.

Its probably one of the only features not built into the Ipod Touch which we see in the Iphone. Lets put the phone part of the Iphone aside and really think about what does the Ipod Touch 2.0 not have thats in the Iphone 3gs. Yes, the compass is missing, thats true. But the only really major feature not present into the Ipod Touch 2.0 is simply the camera.

It all makes sense if you think about it. What else can you put into an Ipod Touch? It pretty much does everything except being able to make phone calls (Aside from Skype). You have bluetooth, Wifi, external speaker and lots of storage built into it. So what can Apple do to keep its Multi-Touch mp3 player ahead of the competition? Yes, your right, build in a camera.

Apple can keep updating the storage capacity of the Mp3 player, but it also needs to keep its customers happy. Even though the Ipods competition might be far behind, that wont be true for a long time unless Apple can come up with something new. It will probably add in the compass which appears in the new Iphone, but there needs to be something else just to keep customers at the edge of their seats.

This was just a little observation. Apple is a very unpredictable company, so who knows what it will pull out of its pocket. But then again, it would make a lot of sense if Apple made a camera enabled Ipod Touch.

The StarCraft 2 Logo is the property of Blizzard Entertainment
According to certain sources, Blizzard will not incorporate the LAN option into Star Craft 2. However as previous titles such as Warcraft 3 have shown, LAN gameplay has become a vital part among Blizzards franchises. Many well acclaimed mods such as TD owe their existence to the incorporation of LAN into Warcraft 3. But Blizzard has a different agenda; its pushing BattleNet as a replacement for LAN gameplay. But even with LAN being replaced by BattleNet entirely, is Blizzard screwing itself over?

We all know it, Blizzard is fighting to prevent pirated copies of Star Craft 2. If you don't have the original game you cant log into BattleNet, if you cant log into BattleNet you cant play multilayer. Its a sort of model a lot of companies have been using over the past half decade to prevent people with pirated versions of their games to play online. But all of those games still had one thing; they still had LAN game play.

Despite the benefits, there is a back stabber to this whole scheme. Imagine a large LAN party or a large tournament that is set up to play Star Craft 2. For each player to play against one another, each player has be on their BattleNet account. Seems non-problematic, but while this might not be a problem for Denmark or Korea, the rest of the world seems to suffer from a pretty slow internet connection. Even if game data is still sent though just LAN, each player still has to be logged into their account. This means each account is constantly updated and checked though the internet. Now imagine a tournament of 100 people playing though BattleNet. Because BattleNet needs to sustain a constant connection with each of the players machines, having 100 people play on the same internet connection can be very problematic. Players are going to get disconnected and lagged constantly. Having to use the internet adds a new link to the network chain, and that means more room for errors. The reliability of the internet is alone simply not enough when it comes down tournaments handing $30,000 for first place.

Over the past decade countries such as Korea have hosted hundreds to thousands of tournaments just revolving around original Starcraft. To someone like myself it seems like Blizzard is about to shoot it self in the foot, seeing as those tournaments are the ones who have kept the game on sale for the past decade. The decision is going to make the companies and organizations that hosted these tournaments think more than twice before switching to the new title. Blizzard is really throwing out their bread and butter with this one.

To many people, its a great benefit to have two screens connected to one computer. You can compare documents, file management becomes much easier and your general work flow benefits from. But gamers and graphics enthusiasts beware, two screens will decrease your graphics performance.

When you have two screens, your computer has to render a whole second screen of pixels. If lets say your screen runs at 1248 X 1024, then having a second screen that is exactly the same would force your computer to render twice as much, or in other worlds 2496 X 1024. This isn't very obvious to the average user, but it makes a difference when it comes down to gaming.

I don't have any exact figures to throw at you unfortunately. Hopefully I could get them after I run 3D Mark. I will stick to my observation for now. For my test I played World of Warcraft and Far Cry 2 on duel screen. I have a Nvidia 9600GT with a 3.0 Ghz Pentium (Fast even compared to most core 2 duo) and 2.5gb of RAM. The two games offer a pretty good range of graphics quality. In my little home made test, I have discovered that Far Cry 2 (Set to high all) ran at about 15-20 frames on average. While World of Warcraft seemed to suffer the most where it ran at about 10-15 frames per second.

Once I unplugged the other screen and rebooted my system, I tested both games again. With Ultra High switched on, Far Cry 2 ran at about 20-25 frames per second, while World of Warcraft shot up to around 30 frames per second on average.

As it shows, if you are a gamer, don't run two screens. It only causes the computer to work more and deliver lower frame rates. Ill throw out some statistics when I can from 3D Mark so you can really see the difference.

Even though the record companies deny it, they know very well that there is no way to stop piracy. The internet is such a vast place and advanced technology that there is no way to stop copying of illegal music. They might close down a few torrent sites but others will just emerge. They might eradicate the use of torrents but another technology will simply replace what we have now."If you cant fight them, join them" is a saying every person has probably heard before. But can record companies really look at it that way? I would say they should. They should simply because there is no other way.

Record companies don't lose as much money as they say

One big flaw in the way record companies tally up their loss to pirating. They use a very simple formula : 'songs downloaded * cost = loss'. Every person that looks at this formula probably would say the same thing; that cant be right. If an individual wants to obtain an album and cant download it, the chances are they are not going to pay $10 for just 10 songs. To counter that claim, a record company would come out with statistics to show their losses over a year. That's wrong too. They plot the statistic against data back from when you had no other choice but to buy a cd and cosset. For every cosset or cd sold, they clipped off a little profit from the case, cd or cosset. But today's world is a little different. People don't buy cd's or cossets anymore, they buy off the internet. Record companies cant snip off here and there anymore.

Record companies can find other ways of profit

While I might come off as a person who just wants to download songs off the internet and not pay the artist, your wrong. I want the artist to get payed for the music they create, I just think there is a better way to do it. Today there are plenty of examples, like Microsoft's Zune Pass subscription service. You pay a monthly fee and you get to download as many songs as you like. But you can take it a step further from that. You can offer music for free, but host the website based on advertisement. Imagine the amount of money companies would be willing to pour into a service with hundreds of thousands of people downloading music. The service will probably be the Facebook of downloading music. The profits from advertisement will be unbelievable. We already see this in a lot of services presented by yahoo and other companies that let you view music videos. So why cant music be downloaded and listened to in a similar way?

It would take years for companies to adopt

Its hard letting go of a system that has been worked out for the last half century. Record companies have set in stone how you sell music physically. But the world is changing much too fast. It would take a few years for companies to actually realize the potential for advertisement driven music sales. All we can do right now is wait for someone smart enough to invest in such a project.