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AMD takes on both x86-based embedded system development and Raspberry Pi-style micro-PCs with with the Gizmo board-- a 25cm-square development board running Android, Linux and Windows.

The package includes a dual-core 1GHz G-T40E CPU, Radeon HD 6250 GPU and 1GB of soldered-on RAM, giving it the performance capacity of 52 gigaFLOPS (GFLOPS) according to AMD.

It also includes a number of connectivity options-- VGA, x2 USB, ethernet and x2 custom I/O connectors.

While chiefly aimed for embedded device applications (such as STBs, thin clients or digital signage), the Gizmo board also appears ideal for independent developers and hobbyists looking for something powerful and (relatively) inexpensive.

The Gizmo board is currently available as a development kit from GizmoSphere, the embedded developer community co-founded by AMD, Sage, Texas Multicore Technologies and Viosoft.

Go Gizmo Board

Acer sees a glimmer of hope after its second consecutive annual loss-- Chromebooks show relatively strong sales even as Windows 8 fails to boost PC sales.

According to Bloomberg 5-10% of Acer US PC shipments consist of Chromebooks (such as the C7) since Google revealed the free notebook OS, a ratio the company expects to "remain sustainable" in the long term.

Acer now also considers selling Chromebooks outside the US.

“Windows 8 is still not successful” Acer president Jim Wong tells Bloomberg. “The whole market didn’t come back to growth after the Windows 8 launch, that’s a simple way to judge if it is successful or not.”

Google does not believe in the password any more-- the search giant is working on a yet unnamed security protocol designed for integration with authentication devices.

In an IEEE Security & Privacy Magazine paper Google security VP Eric Grosse and engineer Mayank Upadhyay outlines plans different means for logging into the websites of the near future, such as SIM cards, authentication keys and NFC-enabled finger rings.

“Along with many in the industry, we feel passwords and simple bearer tokens such as cookies are no longer sufficient to keep users safe,” Grosse and Upadhyay write. “We’ll have to have some form of screen unlock, maybe passwords but maybe something else... But the primary authenticator will be a token like this or some equivalent piece of hardware.”

The problem with such a security system is getting other websites to adopt the Google approach. Grosse and Upadhyay insist the security protocol they describe is Google-independent, and only requires a browser update from the user's side.

Google already has at least one partner-- Yubikey cryptographic device maker Yubico. Such devices connect to PCs via either USB or NFC and require a single password to handle multiple systems.

Currently the Google security proposals are in testing, but should the industry agree with the search giant we might see an end to increasingly long and complicated passwords. Until then, Google also offers a 2-step authentication process...

Go Google Protocol & Yubico Identity Vision

Go IEEE Security & Privacy Magazine

Researchers at the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) believes they have the next storage format-- DNA, a material that is both robust and long lasting while being incredibly small.

The EBI claims one can store "at least" 100 million hours of HD video in a cup of DNA.

As an alternative to HDDs and magnetic tape, DNA might be hard to beat. As EBI researcher Nick Goldman puts it, "DNA is a robust way to store information because we can extract it from wooly mammoth bones, which date back tens of thousands of years, and make sense of it. It is also incredibly small, dense and does not need any power for storage.”