As you may or may not have heard, Sony and Stanford University released a Folding@Home client for the Playstation 3. This is awesome in itself, but what’s more is amazing is the effect it’s had on the computing power of F@H. If you look at the current numbers, the PS3 has almost tripled the computing performance (in teraflops) of every other operating system.

This absurd amount of processing power is primarily due to the fact that the PS3 is designed to produce beautiful graphics, which seems to have the same sort of needs as folding proteins. Video cards, in general, seem to have a tremendous ability to process these sorts of numbers, because if you look at the numbers, although there are only about 700 GPUs (other than PS3) crunching numbers for F@H, they are doing the same amount of work of around 25,000 Linux boxes.

Hopefully this move by Sony will encourage Nintendo and Microsoft to implement similar clients on the Wii and Xbox. By allowing these machines to fold proteins in their spare time, it may very well lead to significant advances in research of diseases such as cancer. Pretty amazing that playing video games may very well lead to a cure for cancer.

I have finally managed to snag myself a Wii! After my parents essentially gave me an “I.O.U.” for Christmas, it’s been a little over 2 months until I was able to locate one. My mom and I were flying to Florida fairly early on Sunday, so my dad went by Target after dropping us off and got one from their shipment. So far, Zelda: Twilight Princess is the only game I’ve bought in addition to the included Wii Sports, but I’ve logged quite a few hours of playing time nonetheless.

So far, I’m really liking the controller—it just feels much more intuitive. For instance, yesterday I got my sister and parents playing Wii Sports with virtually no instructions: all I had to say is “do it like you’re playing tennis,” and they played Wii Tennis with ease. Were this a regular controller, they would’ve had no chance of learning with so little instruction. As of right now, there really aren’t too many games out for the Wii yet, but I think as soon as developers start figuring out how to best use the new controller, there will be a heavy flow of innovative titles. Personally, I’m really looking forward to First Person Shooters on the Wii (there’s a good article over at Joystiq about possible controls), but I’m even more excited to see how many new ways game developers find to use the Wiimote.

Hopefully I’ll pick up a more few games soon—Excite Truck looks like it should be lots of fun, as will Mario Party 8 when it comes out.

According to ZDNet, as well as many other sources, Netflix is beginning to offer a movie streaming service for its users. While right now the service is only offered to a limited number of customers, it will eventually be available to everyone who uses Netflix. Each user, depending on what plan they have, will get a certain number of hours to watch movies streamed through their browser.

So, is this going to work? The internet already has several movie download services, such as Movielink and CinemaNow, but, as far as I know, they are largely unsuccessful. Netflix, however, has a chance to become successful. Why?

• Large customer base – Netflix already has a large and loyal customer base. Because customers are are getting the service for free along with the typical rental plan, the service will most likely be used, unlike if you were to go with an existing service.
• Generous viewing time – with the 3 at a time plan, users will be able to watch 18 hours of movies online. While this isn’t unlimited, it means you’ll be able to watch roughly 8-9 movies online every month, which definitely adds a lot more value to Netflix.
• Already included in the plan—no extra cost – Many users probably don’t want to try out sites such as Movielink because they have to pay more for a service, such as Netflix, that they already have. Therefore, the users of Netflix will be much more likely to try out the service, for the sole reason that they don’t have to pay extra for it.
• Easy to use – Judging by Hacking Netflix’s demo of “Watch Now”, users will find it very easy to view the movies. You don’t have to download anything other than a simple plugin, which looks easy enough to install.
• A large selection of movies – Right now, Netflix is offering around 1000 titles to be viewed online. As they begin to roll out the service, I’m guessing more and more movie studios will agree to have their content available this way, which means a higher percentage of Netflix’s extensive catalog will be available online.

All-in-all, this seems like a great move on Netflix’s part, and it will be a good way to retain customers. They needed some way to keep up with Blockbuster’s Total Access program, and this looks like it could (potentially) be it. I’m looking forward to this being enabled on my account, and I’ll let you know how it goes once I use it.

So, yesterday Apple released the iPhone, which stands to revolutionize the phone industry. It runs OSX, acts as an iPod, and has an incredible touchscreen. But, Apple fell a little short of making it the ultimate phone.

I’m talking about the lack of Skype integration. This phone seems like it can do just about anything, so why not make it a VOIP phone as well? With the built in WiFi, iPhone could detect when you’re in a hotspot, switch to Skype, and make all your calls run through that. That way, you wouldn’t waste minutes, and you’d get all the benefits of an Internet call.

Apple’s mistake, then, was locking iPhone with Cingular. No way will Cingular allow Apple to make a phone that lets users bypass the Cingular network. This is unfortunate—I was really hoping Apple would make their phone usable across multiple carriers. Unfortunately, Apple believed it needed a specific carrier to fully utilize the new features iPhone brings to the cellular phone market.

But there is hope for Skype integration! Thanks to the fact that the iPhone runs OSX, it stands to reason that many other apps can run on it, so why not Skype? The iPhone already has Wi-Fi built in, so it has everything Skype needs. I just hope that a developer out there figures out a way to hook into the phone part of iPhone and is able to turn this amazing device into an even more revolutionary utility.

UPDATE: It looks like what John said in the comments is true: there will be no 3rd party apps on the iPhone. Disappointing for sure.