TOP TECHNOLOGY NEWS

Unless “frag life” is tattooed across your stomach, it might be hard to justify dropping $500 on a video card. But if gaming is your religion, the purchase of Nvidia’s 8800 GTX is merely an act of contrition. Packed with an ungodly amount of horsepower, this card boasts a 575-MHz core processor with 768 MB of video memory and its memory speed maxes out at 900 MHz. When plugged into our testing rig, it cranked out an amazing 29 video frames per second in the ultra-graphically-intensive Oblivion: The Elder Scrolls IV with the resolution dialed up to 1920 x1200.

Sony has announced plans for a new hi-def DVD recorder that won’t do what you’d really like it to. The VRD-MC5 DVDirect machine is designed for transferring videos from Sony camcorders and still photos from pretty much anything onto discs. It records to Blu-ray and DVD+/+RW discs and can grab video with 1080i resolution, Dolby 5:1 sound and more.

What better way to show your faith in survival of Internet radio than with Freecom’s Music Pal. The audio device gives you access to 5,000 Internet radio stations without using a PC and allows you to subscribe to RSS/blog feeds. If you prefer more personalized playlists, you can stream your mp3s or WAVs over your WLAN. The Music Pal features a built-in speaker, a 128 x 64 LCD, a headphone jack and stereo audio out. It will be available in August for $178.

We’re usually skeptical when we see devices heralded as the "world’s smallest," but we’re willing to accept Mini Gadgets’ claim about its Black Box DVR. The 2.28-square-inch, 45-gram video recorder sports a 640X480 video resolution, a long-life lithium ion battery and 4GB of storage via MiniSD. It’s price tag is not the world’s smallest however — a whopping $995.

Lucky Brits will soon have one more thing to be paranoid about: How much juice their gadgets guzzle. 8,000 homes are set to get “smart meters” in a UK energy saving trial. Price hikes alone don’t really deter people from their habits – Britain is still a nation of smokers despite the high cost of cigarettes at around £6 ($12) a pack.

The smart meters display in real time the amount of energy your household devices are consuming, in a human readable form much easier to decode than spinning discs and Kilowatt hours. The thinking is, if people relate the cost of power to the gizmo using it, they’ll be less likely to leave TVs on standby or phone chargers plugged in.

New York and London have a few things in common. Both have famous cabs, both have great bagels, NYC has Queens, London has The Queen. But if Mayor Bloomberg gets his way, The Big Apple might just get a few thousand new security cameras. Using the catchall anti-terror excuse, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said to the New York Times that “This area is very critical to the economic lifeblood of this nation [and] we want to make it less vulnerable”. The scheme will cost $25 million, $10 million from the city and (hopefully) $15 million from Washington.

Mayor Bloomberg gives away the real reason for the extra 3,000 planned CCTV cameras. Money. He wants to use the cameras to read license plates on cars and charge $6 to enter downtown and lower Manhattan. The scheme is similar to London’s Congestion Charge, where motorists pay £8 ($16) a day to drive into the city center.

A group of scientists in Berlin say they’ve come up with a technique to cram 500GB of data onto a standard-sized optical disc, and they expect to be up to 1 terabyte in a couple of years. The Microholas Project used microholographic recording techniques to store data in three dimensions, as opposed to the two-dimensional bumps and pits etched on traditional optical discs.

Microholographic discs are transparent and have 10 layers with five different wavelengths. Scientists with the project are confident they can get media and machines on the market at prices competitive with current optical technology.

Danish engineers are ready to introduce the world to "Hortibot," a weed-killing robot meant to take some of the drudgery out of growing vegetables. The self-propelled, GPS-guided unit can identify 25 different types of weeds and remove them with a variety of methods, including plucking, pinpoint spraying, and torching with flames or laser.

Bored of imagining that WiFi is making children ill, British nannies have turned their attention to … projectors! The bulbs are too bright, they say, threatening to overexpose kids’ peripheral vision and damage retinas “even when not actually staring directly into the beam.”

‘A letter from the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (Becta) admits that only a third of whiteboards have health and safety notices on them and says that its “current health and safety information does not address projectors”.’

The lamps are dangerous, allegedly, when they exceed guidelines that specify a 1,500 lumen max.

Wondering where the beacoup bucks you paid for your iPhone are going? Mostly into Apple’s pocket.

Research firm iSuppli calculated the bill of goods for the iPhone and concluded that it costs $265.83 to make each 8GB handset. With a sales price of $600, that works out to a 55 percent profit margin, not accounting for royalties and marketing.

If you have any money left over, Apple stock is selling for around $126 a share today.