SoBeTECH

Laptops may get more battery life from silver-zinc
ZPower will soon plug silver-zinc batteries into laptops

Laptop users may soon get longer battery life from their machines, with ZPower set to plug in its new silver-zinc batteries, which it claims last significantly longer than traditional lithium-ion batteries.

The batteries will be available in consumer and business laptops from major PC makers starting in August, according to Ross Dueber, the CEO of ZPower, although he declined to name any of the vendors on Thursday.

Silver-zinc batteries pack more energy than lithium-ion batteries, giving laptops 40 per cent more run time, according to Dueber. If a laptop runs for two hours with a lithium-ion battery, it should run for closer to three hours with a silver-zinc battery, he said.

The battery’s water-based chemistry also makes it nonflammable, compared to lithium-ion, which uses dimethyl carbonate, a flammable liquid. Cells can go off “like firecrackers” in lithium-ion batteries, Dueber said.

The silver-zinc batteries also won’t degrade in capacity during the first year, while lithium-ion batteries can lose up to 30 per cent of their capacity over that period, Dueber said. After a year, however, silver-zinc batteries start degrading at a rate similar to lithium-ion batteries.

(Via Macworld UK.)

Iron Man is the Best Reviewed Movie of 2008

Iron Man is not only a great comic book movie, but it’s a great film. Jon Favreau’s Marvel comic book adaptation is the best reviewed movie of the year (so far). The film currently has a 96% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes with 117 reviews. The only two 2008 releases which have garnered more critical acclaim have been smaller independent releases (Taxi to the Dark Side and Blindsight). The closest wide Hollywood release is the Judd Apatow-produced Forgetting Sarah Marshall with 85% (138 reviews counted). And who says that movie critics are stuck up folk who don’t appreciate popcorn flicks?

Not only that, but Iron Man is also currently the best reviewed Superhero movie of all time. Let’s take a look at the eight best-reviewed superhero movies of all time (according to Rotten Tomatoes).

• Iron Man - 96% (117 reviews)
• Spider-Man 2 - 93% (228 reviews)
• Superman: The Movie - 93% (46 reviews)
• Spider-Man 90% (206 reviews)
• X2: X-Men United - 87% (214 reviews)
• Batman Begins - 84% (246 reviews)
• X-Men - 80% (141 reviews)
• Hellboy - 79% (182 reviews)

(Via /Film.)

BusinessWeek Cover Story on Rising Mac Share in Businesses

There’s also this preamble on their Byte of the Apple weblog, where Arik Hesseldahl writes:

A Yankee Group survey that is soon to be published, found that of some 250 companies surveyed, 87% of them have some Macs in their organizations, whereas this number was only 48% two years ago.

For a market that remained relatively stagnant for about 20 years, that’s a remarkable change for just two years.

(Via Daring Fireball.)

Alien Salt and Pepper Shakers

These aliens are just fine as salt and pepper shakers. They are not the typical aliens that you expect to take over the world. Not with them wearing clothing I would expect to see on my grandparents. They may just need a quick pat down to be sure those clothes are not cover for their weapons. Sometimes that innocent look is a dead giveaway for some nefarious plot of theirs and you know how dangerous alien laser weaponry can be.

Product Page ($4

(Via Nerd Approved.)

AppleTV update: direct movie purchases, Top Sellers
Apple on Thursday quietly enabled its Apple TV set-top device, in the wake on this morning’s movie announcement, to allow owners of the device to purchase movies directly, without the use of a computer. iLounge reveals that the update was automatically applied, without needing an entire system upgrade. Apple also added a “Top Sellers” category to the “Top Movies” menu, which shows the most popular purchased titles.

(Via MacNN.)

iPhone is the most popular cameraphone on Flickr

Not only is the Apple iPhone the most popular phone for browsing the Internet, it is also the most popular phone for uploading pictures. Flickr, the world’s largest gallery of online pictures (by some accounts) rates the number of pictures uploaded by each type of camera phone. Guess who just passed the 5 megapixel Nokia N95 in terms of percentage of users? Yep, the 2 megapixel iPhone…

The results tabulated below show that the iPhone has steadily pulled ahead of the top Nokia and Sony Ericsson Phones over the course of the past year. One would expect this lead to dramatically increase once a 3G iPhone is released (faster native uploads).
The results are pretty impressive given that the iPhone isn’t even a year old and the specs on the camera are considered by many to be underpowered.

(Via Seth Weintraub’s blog.)