E Ink grabs majority share in SiPix for e-paper dominance

E Ink is grabbing a majority share of fellow e-paper maker SiPix Technology, the company has confirmed, and aims to snatch up 100-percent of shares in a deal worth around $50m. The agreement, which his expected to be  finalized by the end of the year, is part of E Ink’s aim to corner the e-paper market, and will see SiPix tech – including that of its SiPix Imagine subsidiary – integrated into future E Ink products.

E Ink is already found in the vast majority of ereaders, including the Kindle, NOOK, Sony Reader and more. However, that market has seen significant attack from the growing number of tablets such as Apple’s iPad, Amazon’s Kindle Fire and the new Google Nexus 7, with LCD displays proving more flexible for multimedia beyond text alone.

“Today, E Ink’s products are finding homes in a number of new applications which can be better served with the inclusion of SiPix’s products, technologies and intellectual property to our portfolio” Felix Ho, vice chairman of E Ink said of today’s deal. The company will initially include SiPix displays in the overall range it offers, but plans to integrate more of the behind-the-scenes technology – perhaps including slow video-capable e-paper - into future products.

That could also mean more use of e-paper in embedded environments, with E Ink keen to emphasize the low power consumption of its panels as ideal for its “E Ink On Every Smart Surface” strategy. Possibilities include tablet cases – such as Apple’s recent display-integrated Smart Cover concept - and other implementation where power supply could be insufficient or impractical for LCD or OLED.

Initially, E Ink will buy 82.7-percent of SiPix’s shares, though the goal is to buy 100-percent.

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LulzSec Reborn grabs and leaked 10,000 Twitter accounts

If you needed another reason to be cautious about providing log-in credentials from your most personal and sacred accounts into an unconfirmed third-party app, here’s one. An app called TweetGif, which allowed users to share animated .gif images but only if they provided their Twitter username and password, has been revealed to be nothing more than a phishing scheme.

Now, around 10,000 Twitter credentials have been leaked, with seemingly no targeted purpose other than proof of concept. Taking credit for the hack-friendly app is LulzSec Reborn, a group that aims to capitalize on the once dominant hacking group LulzSec, which disbanded last year after a flurry of attacks on large companies, government entities throughout the planet, and law enforcement agencies.

The infamous ‘LulzSec’ name came back into the spotlight in March, when the so-called LulzSec Reborn project was introduced. During that same month, the FBI arrested multiple members of the LulzSec family after it managed to secure the identity of its ring leader, knwon as Sabu. It is unclear whether or not LulzSec Reborn actually contains any members of the original LulzSec, and in fact there are claims that it is a completely new group of people.

[via PC Mag]

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Gigabyte grabs Ivy Bridge CPU overclocking record at 7.032 GHz

If you are a computer geek, you’ll know what overclocking is all about. Overclocking is where geeks use various processes and often resort to exotic cooling to coax higher speeds and more performance out of their processors, RAM, and video cards. Gigabyte has announced that it has been able to set the record for the highest validated CPU clock speed using an Intel Core i7 3770K processor.

Naturally, Gigabyte’s own Z77X-UD3H mainboard was used in the record-setting run. The overclocking geek who was able to set the crazy, higher than 7 GHz milestone goes by the name HiCookie. To reach the insane clock speed the overclocker did have to resort to using liquid nitrogen to keep the processor cool. The same person also broke the current highest memory speed record for the Ivy Bridge platform.

HiCookie was able to reach 3280 MHz with all four memory slots populated on the Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD5H mainboard. The RAM used to set the record is G.Skill Trident X DDR3-2800. Gigabyte says that the two records were achieved thanks in part to its engineering prowess and memory tuning capabilities.

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Google grabs HP webOS Enyo HTML5 team

Google has quietly snatched up the HP team responsible for the webOS Enyo HTML5 project, it’s been revealed, with the search giant expected to use their expertise in Android, ChromeOS and other products. Initially believed to be the bulk of the team, according to The Verge, then narrowed down to roughly half a dozen by AllThingsD - including project chief Matt McNulty – the ship-jumping was not apparently done all at once, but after a series of individual hires. However, HP says its open-source webOS plans are still on track.

“We’re pleased with the traction Enyo has gained to date and plan to continue its development along with the open source community” HP said in a statement. “The Open webOS project is on schedule and we remain committed to the roadmap announced in January.”

That project has seen HP take the OS it acquired from Palm and attempt to repackage it for the open-source community, with Open WebOS heavily dependent on Enyo for its app and browser rendering. Downloads of Enyo had already numbered 40,000 just three weeks after its release earlier in the year, but the shift of much of the team responsible had left concerns that HP would not be able to continue its progress.

Still, you can’t fault the Enyo team for looking beyond HP; the company had already laid off 275 webOS employees back in February. According to insiders, Google individually negotiated each new hire over the course of several months, and the team is expected to regroup within the search giant in June.

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