This Xbox 360 is Covered in 10,000 Crystals

This one pack's AU$1,000 worth of crystal bling bling.

Earlier this week we featured an Xbox 360 organized by Microsoft Australia to celebrate the 1 millionth Xbox 360 console sold down under. It was an impressive effort from WETA Workshop, crafting one amazing sculpture of the Xbox 360 and Master Chief. But what if you wanted the bling?

This other shiny console, which has plenty of bling-bling in the literal sense, is also a part of the charity auction.

Nothing sparkles quite like the ‘Crystal’ console boasting more than 10,000 semi-precious stones and valued at more than $1000.00 (AU). A one-of-a-kind design, this Xbox 360 Arcade console is set to be a showpiece for the most glamorous ‘bling’ living room.

iPad Shortage Due to LCD; Next iPad Packs OLED?

An OLED-packing iPad would be something worth waiting for.

While Apple was able to make good on its April delivery dates for the iPad to U.S. customers, Apple had to delay the worldwide rollout by a full month due to demand outstripping supply.

Now analysts close to part vendors point to the iPad's 9.7-inch IPS display as the culprit for the supply problems. Bloomberg cites Andrew Rassweiler, an analyst at research firm ISuppli Corp, saying, "We understand that the yields on the display have been low and that they’re creating a production bottleneck. That they have been doing it for the iPhone for some time is great, but once you go to 9.7 inches, it is a much more complicated process."

In related news, DigiTimes cites its sources in the component industry as saying that Apple is currently investigating the use of OLED panels for its next iPad, expected to hit sometime in 2011.

While OLED panels are now making their way into mobile devices such as PMPs and smartphones, DigiTimes' in-house analyst believes that even by next year the price of a 9.7-inch OLED panel would still be cost prohibitive.

Currently, the IPS panel in the iPad is estimated to cost between $60-70, while a similarly sized OLED screen would be in the $500 range.

Your Laptop Could Be an Earthquake Detector

Thinkpads and MacBook Pros working together to help save lives.

While all new smartphones today have accelerometers, it's still a rarity for laptops; but researchers are putting those laptops, as few as there are, to use by turning them into tremor detectors.

PC laptops such as ThinkPads and all Apple MacBook Pro laptops feature an accelerometer that's used to park the heads of hard drives in case of sudden movement. It's a safety feature that helps to keep your data from a scary hard drive crash, but researchers are putting that technology towards earthquake detection.

A report from NPR has put the spotlight on Quake-Catcher Network, a project from StanfordUniversity that uses the combined data from accelerometer-packing laptops that are connected to the internet.

A user of a ThinkPad, MacBook Pro, or anyone with an external USB detector, can download the software for free to help aid in earthquake detection. Of course, the sensors inside a laptop aren't designed to pick up minute movements in the earth – in fact, they can only pick up tremors of about magnitude 4.0 and above – but it would still be valuable information for warning surrounding areas.

"If you can detect an event fast enough, then you can potentially provide advance alert to surrounding areas, and those areas could react in several seconds and get to safety," one of the researchers explained.

20 Smart Android Phone Tips and Tricks : Customize Your Home Screen

For starters: customize your Android phone’s background. Some devices will even let you add a moving, interactive image. Just hit the menu button and select the Wallpaper option. Follow the directions to select images from your phone’s camera, images loaded onto your phone, or a default wallpaper. But images are just the beginning of what you can put on your desktop. Clever programmers have created dozens of widgets that can also be moved to your home screen. Press down on an empty spot of real estate on your home screen, and that will pull up a menu to let you add everything from widgets, to program shortcuts and folders. If you can bear to part with a little over $1, Beautiful Widgets from the Marketplace is a great place to start for finding home screen add-ons.

Apple Mods Intel Chipset for Auto GPU Switching

Instead of Nvidia Optimus, Apple makes its own automatic graphics switching technology.

When Apple announced that its new 15- and 17-inch MacBook Pros had both the Intel HD IGP as well as a discrete Nvidia GT 330M GPU and it could switch seamlessly between them automatically, we assumed that it was using the Nvidia Optimus technology – but it isn't. Instead, Apple brewed up its own software solution, which works in a slightly different fashion, Ars Technica reports.

While Nvidia Optimus uses a software-driven list of apps that would trigger a system to switch over to discrete graphics, Apple's solution detects on the OS level whenever OpenGL, Core Graphics, Quartz Composer are in use and calls in the discrete GPU to help.

Another way Apple's method differs from Nvidia's system is that Optimus runs the discrete GPU's display through the IGP's frame buffer. This requires that both the GPU and IGP to be active, as well as taking up a lot of traffic on the bus. Apple's solution deactivates the Intel HD graphics whenever the GT 330M is called upon, helping it be a little more power friendly.

Apple credits its control over software and hardware as the main reason why it is able to offer an arguably better solution to automatically switching graphics. In fact, Apple appears to have modified the baseline HM55 Express Intel chipset to accommodate for this more advanced switching technology, according to ateardown done by iFixit.

Sadly, Apple doesn't offer the user full control over which graphics part run and when. The quoted battery life is 8 hours when running the GT 330M and 9 hours when it's Intel HD IGP only. Although the user can select between auto switching and having the GT 330M run full time, the option to disable the discrete GPU for the sake of prolonging battery life (like being able to switch off Bluetooth or Wi-Fi) doesn't exist.