It’s not the sexiest thing you’ve ever seen, but this prototype of Nvidia’s ION nettop platform shows its colors. Bristling with USB ports, audio jacks and eSata adapters, it wants to prove that performance can come in small packages. How best to illustrate this? Nvidia goes for the only benchmark that matters: gaming! NVIDIA ION graphics processors will power a new generation of smaller, greener, fully capable PCs. Consumers utilizing ION-based PCs will be able to make full use of some of the worlds most popular applications, such as Spore, Call of Duty 4, Google Earth, Adobe Photoshop, Cyberlink PowerDVD, LEGO: Batman, and Battlefield 2. … New affordable and powerful PC hardware like ION is going to change the landscape of PC gaming, said Ben Cousins, executive producer at DICE, a division of Electronic Arts. This new mass-market target audience is a perfect match for Battlefield Heroes. Nvidia promises “10x faster graphics” on its tiny form-factor systems than “similar systems,” by which it means Pico- and Mini-ITX motherboards made by Via, and Intel’s relentlessly dismal integrated video chips. Its aim is perhaps to establish a new tier of popular gaming systems that match game console performance instead of greatly exceeding it. From a practical standpoint, this approach is more likely to facilitate a stable PC gaming market than high-end plug-in video cards that only geeks buy. World’s Leading Software Companies Rally Around NVIDIA ION [Nvidia]

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Ion, that being a nettop with decent graphics

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Asterisko

Sony’s HDR-TG5 is smaller than a Sanyo Xacti of any stripe, but offers 1080p AVCHD video, 10x optical zoom, 16GB of built-in storage and built-in GPS, so everything you shoot is geo-tagged. It costs $1,200, of course. Sony’s tiny HD camcorder geotags, for a price [CNET]

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A high-def handicam with GPS

There is a site up that finds testable predictions and grades them at the moment of truth . The records of our nearest and dearest are not great: Robert Scoble and Dave Winer, it transpires, are merely writers of extraordinarily mundane science fiction. [Wrong Tomorrow]

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Wrong Tomorrow

Novatel’s latest 3G USB stick gets a theoretical 7.2 Mbps on European HSPA networks. it’s less than a centimeter thick, according to the blurb, and will be available this summer.

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Ovation 3G stick, small as a thumbdrive

Top Gear ’s ambitious Sipster project, in which an old Golf was customized to get 70mpg, was a success: With a probably overambitious goal of building a car that can achieve 70 mpg, scoot to 60 mph in less than 7 seconds and cost only $7K to build, Project Sipster was born. Lots of cuts, cussing and sleepless nights later, a Reagan-era Volkswagen Rabbit was transformed from a cute beater into an eco-friendly tire burner; a modern turbodiesel engine and aerodynamic modifications brought the heat to this Cold War relic. Through (too many) trials and (frequent) tribulation, Project Sipster took shape, but could we nail our targets? Find out below with exclusive Project Sipster videos, stories and photography. Catch up at their project page . [Top Gear]

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Top Gear squeezes 70mpg from a VW Rabbit of ancient and evil vintage

Precentral has made a delightful discovery: It looks like the WebOS-powered Palm Pre will have official emulation to run old PalmOS apps .

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Looks like the Palm Pre will run PalmOS apps, too

The 22nd Annual Rube Goldberg machine contest saw many fun attempts at comical inefficiency this year, including this Super Mario machine entry from engineers at Penn State. [via PopMech ]

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Real-life Super Mario Rube Goldberg Machine

Comedian Louis C.K. recently went to the Middle East to entertain the troops and brought along his camera : The gunners reached out into the open air and leveled their guns with a great slot and click sound. They trained them on the ground. I felt my hands tense up. I realized, for the first time, that both my hands were wrapped tightly around my Leica. Oh my god, my Leica! I have the greatest camera in the world in my fucking hands and I’m in the middle of this shit right here. In that moment, ALL FEAR was gone. I was right where I wanted to be in the whole world. I reached into my pocket, which was difficult with the armor, and took out my light meter. I got readings out the window, inside, the floor under my feet. I did quick averages of the readings in my head. Now all my thoughts were of film. “Okay I’m at about 5.6 outside if I’m at 250 which is a good speed from a moving helicopter. If I want to get stuff outside, I’ll squeeze the fstop down to about 8. If I want inside the bird I’ll open to 2.8, 4 if I want a bit of both.” I set all these functions on the camera and started firing away. The helicopter leaned forward and we tore off across Baghdad. [via MeFi ]

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Louis C.K. and his Leica in Iraq

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