| E-waiter, where's my food?
Restaurants in Europe, the United States and Japan are testing technology that allows diners to order food directly off screens at their tables, instead of depending on fellow human beings to note their choices, sometimes grumpily or erroneously. Companies that sell the "e-menu" technology argue that besides cutting costs, this approach has a novelty value that can lure younger customers and increase revenue with tantalizing photographs of meals. The idea may be only the latest gimmick in a trade that is driven by consumer appetites and where fads help. But at least for now, it appears to be helping business. In Israel, Conceptic, a privately owned start-up company, has already installed the technology in sushi bars, pubs and family restaurants.
MTA Urges Albany To Green Light Congestion Pricing
Legislature members have been anxiously waiting for details of the congestion pricing service upgrades. On Wednesday, a spokesman for assembly speaker Sheldon Silver said he still wasn't satisfied. (© MMVIII, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.) .
Ask AP: Superdelegates, Windy Landings
Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama know who the superdelegates are — their campaigns probably have them on speed dial. But where could a curious voter find a complete list of these party leaders and elected officials — the people who, in the end, may play a decisive role in determining the Democratic presidential nominee? That's one of the four questions being answered in this week's "Ask AP," a weekly Q&A column where AP journalists respond to readers' questions about the news. If you have your own news-related question that you'd like to see answered by an AP reporter or editor, send it to newsquestions@ap.org, with "Ask AP" in the subject line. Please include your full name and hometown so they can be published with your question.
LibDems send for Steel to examine powers for Holyrood
Former Liberal leader Lord Steel is being asked to reconvene his party's commission into how devolution can be extended, amid growing fears that Gordon Brown may undermine the current review on the issue. Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Nicol Stephen will today tell his conference in Aviemore that he is recalling the Steel Commission with the remit of producing a firm set of detailed proposals on what further powers should be devolved to Holyrood. This will then form the basis of the LibDem contribution to the new process invoked recently whereby the pro-Union parties at Holyrood and Westminster are to look at where devolution should go next. .
Running AMD Catalyst 8.2 with Intel Skulltrail on Asus' 3870X2
The "internal" driver that detected them fine in Crossfire at the setup stage crashed every time with "driver entered infinite loop" blue screen error: same nasty message on both boards. However, the internal driver did give us some nice 3Dmarks nevertheless. Then, just last week, the Catalyst 8.2 driver series appeared - eager to test if QuadfFire works, we ran it - but no success with two cards: the driver just refuses to register the second one. However, it did improve the performance of a single HD3870X2 card on the Skulltrail, creating some very high 3DMark06 scores in the process. We ran the old driver with dual default 3.2GHz CPUs, then the new Catalyst at the same CPU speed, and finally upped the CPU speed to dual 4GHz. We didn't overclock the Asus graphics card's memory - it can go to 2.1GHz easy usually.
Saturday afternoon Apple links, Guitar Hero edition
Sadly, the links this week won't feature any ridiculous Internet memes, but hopefully you'll be so excited that I'm back to doing the links that you won't miss them. Without further ado, here are all of Apple inks that we couldn't coerce into other posts: If you rock at Guitar Hero III, developer Aspyr is giving you a chance to show off your skills, and will be holding a series of Guitar Hero III tournaments at Apple Stores across the country. Tournaments will be held in San Francisco, Chicago, and New York, as well as a bunch of other cities, so check the website of your local store for details. Wireless memory card Eye-Fi received a software update this week. The update includes a new "Smart Boost" feature, which will upload photos to the Web via your computer, allowing you to take advantage of Wi-Fi speeds to get photos off of your camera.
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