Quadro 4000 Drivers Include Support for Other Fermi Cards. GTX 480 Steps Forward. #nvidia #mac

A few days back, we shared the good news of the Nvidia Quadro 4000 workstation graphics card coming to Mac desktops. As it stands now, that release was even better than originally thought. An eagle-eyed reader of xlr8yourmac found some rather tantalizing information buried deep within the Quadro 4000′s drivers. Specifically, the reader highlighted above used an ATY_Init injector developed by Netkas.org to force his Mac’s EFI to recognize his freshly installed GTX 480. That’s significant because Apple doesn’t officially support the GTX 480. WIth that said, it would be pretty sweet to get a GTX 580 or two humming along inside of a Mac Pro, no?

WIth the right hardware, gaming on the Mac could actually be quite potent.

Cut the Rope Version 1.1 Coming Soon! New Levels, Music, and Achievements. #cuttherope

Those of you who frequent the site know that I love, love angry birds. In fact, it’s probably an unhealthy obsession. But as of late, there are two loves in my life. While Angry Birds is and always will be my #1, Chillingo’s Cut the Rope is easily #2. (IconFactory’s “Astronaut” is #3.) In Cut the Rope, your task is simple: Feed Om Nom his candy. Getting him his candy however, is quite task as the levels progress. Speaking of levels — we’re getting more!

Version 1.1 of Cut the Rope is due out soon and brings with it 25 new levels in a spaceship-themed box. The highlight of this box of course being anti-gravity, which should definitely ratchet up the difficulty a few notches. The next biggest added feature is retina support. I already thought the game looked pretty good, so this will be interesting to experience. Rounding out the list include features such as new music tracks, 11 new achievements, and better scoring accuracy.

There’s no set release date. So in the meantime, hop inside and check out a small teaser video of what Cut the Rope 1.1 has coming…

Sandisk Pulls WP7-Compatible Memory Cards. #wp7

Ok, this is really getting ridiculous. First, Microsoft employes a security feature built into SD cards whose usefulness is questionable. And then they go and jack up the price on said cards, charging significantly more than the cards are worth. Though honestly, the actual manufacturer of the cards — in this case Sandisk — could be, and most likely are the real party at fault. Nonetheless, to say the whole WP7 SD card thing is a cluster is an understatement.

And now, it appears that the SD card issue has yet another monkey wrench — Sandisk has pulled all of the “WP7 Certified” memory cards from their site. Apparently, users were having problems with the officially “certified” cards. Granted, there really could be something wrong with them. At the same time, Sandisk cards are easily (and frequently) faked. With the latter said, I wouldn’t expect fake cards on Sandisk’s own website.

Anyone thinking Microsoft’s adoption of specific SD cards and security features is beginning to look like a bad idea?

webOS 2.0 Coming to All Hardware! #webos #palm

One of the worst things about an aging gadget, specifically smartphones, is the lack of support you and yours receive as the clock ticks away. Not to mention, the ever evolving world of phones leaves quite a few entrants behind faster than you’d think. With that said, one of the longer product support cycles in the mobile phone industry is that of Apple. It may sound like I’m on my fanboy pedestal, but that’s just how I see it. Truth be told, there are very few platforms or devices where you can still get an update that not only brings bug fixes, but boast-worthy features 1-2 years after the devices’ initial launch.

Palm must feel the same way. Palm developer advocate Josh Marinacci mentioned on stage at webOS Developer Days that “all devices” would be gettign webOS 2.0. Now obviously, your old brick of a phone Treo 650 doesn’t have a chance of seeing webOS’s sexy bits. But seemingly written off phones like the original Palm Pre do all of a sudden feel a bit more desirable again.

All in all, it’s great news for webOS users looking at 1+ year old hardware in their hands. At first we kind of wrote off the Pre 2 for it’s rather minor updates in hardware compared to the original Pre. But in this case it appears it helped the original Pre owners. Because if the Pre 2 was radically different, something tells me Palm would be a bit more willing to let it fade into obscurity.

Microsoft Pulls Flip-flop on Kinect Hacking. Now “Inspired”. #kinect #microsoft #fail

In what has to be one of the quickest turn-arounds, Microsoft has gone from basically saying they’d actively seek out and sue individuals who hack the Xbox 360 Kinect gaming accessory, to now claiming that they’re “inspired”. The specific quotes and head scratching good time are after the break…

Control a Hacked Kinect with an iPad. #kinect

It wasn’t long ago that we saw the first images from a freshly cracked and hacked Microsoft Kinect gaining multi-touch support. But now that we’ve had a solid week to let the developer community really explore the Kinect’s open source driver, some really interesting things should start trickling out.

Take for example the image above which shows a Macbook Pro, Kinect, and iPad all playing nice together. The onscreen model grows larger or smaller depending on how close some one or some thing is to the Kinect. Tying it all together is one Apple iPad which is employing TouchOSC for fine tuning the onscreen model and Kinect. It’s pretty neat to see in action. On that note, hop inside and check out the video…

Cox Wireless Unveils “Unbelievably Fair” Plans.

Residents of Orange County, California; Omaha, Nebraska; and Hampton Roads, Virginia have a new option in wireless service today. Home Internet and TV provider Cox Wireless has finally unveiled their new “Unbelievably Fair” plans. One of the biggest features of Cox’s new plans include a feature called “Money Back Minutes”. The concept is simple: Unused minutes earn you cash back (up to $20 per month). Furthermore, a rather robust usage alert system is also offered free of charge. Further adding to the “Unbelievably Fair” aspect, a DVR-management app is included as is one free upgrade to customers who are also a Cox home phone, TV, or internet subscriber.

For now, Cox is using Sprint-owned spectrum to get their service up and running, however, plans are underway to built out their own network as time progresses.

Prices for Cox Wireless plans start at $39.99/month for 450 minutes and climb to $69.99 for unlimited minutes. All voice plans iclude free calling to other Cox Wireless and Cox home phone users. Meanwhile, family plans kick off at $69.99 for 800 minutes (shared between two lines | add up to 5 total for $9.99/extra line) and rise to $119 for unlimited talk time.

Rounding out the list are text messaging plans (300 texts: $5 | 1500 texts: $15 | Unlimited texts: $20) and mobile data plans (“Unlimited Starter”: $15 | “Unlimited Advanced”: $30). Oddly enough, there aren’t any data caps mentioned on either of these “unlimited plans”. Though as we all know, no data plan is truly unlimited. With that said, I’ve fired of an email to Cox Wireless to see if we can’t clear things up a bit.

In the mean time, stop on by the new Cox Wireless page and check out their available phones.