If you think the world is full of enough people making bad jokes, then you may not be delighted to hear that Scottish scientists have just invented a computer (and website) that makes bad jokes too.

The Joking Computer software is programmed to make jokes and then it gradually learns to make better jokes using feedback from visitors. More than can be said for my dad anyway.

Using a large dictionary of language and some simple rules, The Joking Computer has the capacity to build millions of different jokes though all of them follow the same format: "All the jokes are question-answer puns, like those you get in Christmas crackers." explains Dr Judith Masthoff, one of the scientists at Aberdeen who developed the joke-maker: "The software allows you to see how the joke-making process works. Or you can choose roughly what sort of joke you want, and have the computer build a new one."

The Joking Computer was dreamed up to help kids with cereberal palsy improve their language skills.

I have to say, I do worry that coming up with jokes like that may in fact hinder rather than help these kids in social interaction.. But still, some insight into jokes is better than no insight into jokes, and of course the site as a whole is a useful resource in learning which jokes aren't funny and why things are or aren't humourous. And let's face it, it's always nice when someone makes the effort to crack a joke. Even when that joke is:

Q: why is a curious visual image different from a shining battle ? A: one is a funny sight , the other is a sunny fight .

I'm laughing but not for the right reasons.

After the joke you can rate it, and deconstruct where it all went wrong..

Anyway, it's a good site to while away some time, potentially help children learn what good jokes are and who knows, find a gem that you can casually drop into your own conversation to make your friends rofl. NB, it won't be the one below.

Dell's iPad killer is here... Try saying that with a straight face. But yes, the Android powered 5 inch Dell Streak is indeed available to buy in O2 stores nationwide.

The touchscreen computer, which is capable of phone calls, and looks suspiciously like a mobile phone, comes sporting 16GB of storage, and a micro-SD slot expanding its potential storage to a whopping 32GB, which is a lot, for a phone -- not so much for a computer.

It's got all the usual bells and whistles you'd expect from a phone, oops, sorry tablet computer, WiFi, 3g, a 5 megapixel camera, and front facing VGA camera for video chatting, something certain competitors couldn't stretch to.

Being a massively lame geek the thing I'm most excited about is the 1 GHz Snapdragon processor and 512 RAM, which should make the Android 1.6 OS snappier than a croc with PMT.

O2 are offering the Dell conncotion for £25 a month on a data only deal, and £35 for voice and data. If you're looking to buy one outright it'll set you back £399.

While the iPad is grabbing eyes and headlines, Apple have just beefed up one of their core offerings by releasing a new family of MacBook Pros. And these are available in the UK.

What are the updates then?
Key updates only come on the 15" and 17" models. Here's the low down:

- Faster chips: the 15" and 17" Airs will get new more powerful dual-core chips, the Intel i5 and i7, which should boost peformance by up to 50% on programmes like Final Cut Pro. The difference is a 10% improvement when running basic programmes.
Intel Core i5 and Core i7 processors also feature Turbo Boost which kicks in during processor-intensive applications like Final Cut Pro, and dynamically increases the speed of one or both cores, taking a 2.66GHz MacBook Pro all the way up to 3.33GHz.
The 13" has an Intel Core Duo processor.

- Better NVIDIA graphics cards: the new 15- and 17-inch MacBooks come with a an NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M graphics processor -- the fastest graphics card ever in a Mac notebook. It's more powerful and more energy efficient than previous generation. These Macs automatically switch graphics cards according to what you're using. Giving you better battery life or better graphics depending on what you're using. The 13" MacBook Pro stays on Nvidia's 320M graphics processor.

- Battery life No drastic leaps here, but it seems slightly improved. Hitting about 8-9 hours on the higher specced 15" and 17", it's 10 hours for the 13" Pro.

Cost?
The cheapest one you can get is the 13" with the 2.4GHz Intel Core Duo chip and a 250 gb hard drive - £999.
To get the benefit of the updates without breaking the bank: get the 15" with an i5 processor and standard storage - £1,649.00
And to go top of the range: get the 17" Macbook with a i5 processor which will set you back £1,899.00.

see all on apple.com/uk

So, an announcement today confirmed the Apple iPad will hit shelves stateside in late April though Brits will have to wait an extra month to get their hands on Apple's holy tablet. But with Steve Jobs' supposedly netbook killing iPad going down about as well as a cool pint of concrete, it would seem that little laptops are here to stay.

One of the criticisms leveled at Apple's tablet offering is that it seems so sternly geared toward media consumption while offering little in the way of production -- an area the netbook copes admirably.

The well-worn cliche of a professional type throwing open their netbook in a coffee franchise and bashing out a blog post, pitch proposal or even a freakin' pie chart isn't something I see changing any time soon.

And what with Apple's infamous and bizarre Atlantic exchange rate mechanism set to land a reasonable mid-spec iPad with 3G somewhere between £450-£600, a lot of people will still be buying netbooks for at least a few years to come.

With that in mind I've compiled a neat little list of the top 10 netbooks currently available.

Click on the image to start the gallery

Well, we said that phones might be dead, but we didn't reckon on fashion laptops disappearing, and my they haven't.

HP teamed up with designer Vivienne Tam to release the Digital Clutch, their second collaboration with the designer in two years. The result is a stylish HP 210 mini featuring a case design by Tam. She has drawn on the same inspirations for the computer as for her Spring collection - butterflies (as you may have guessed). HP tell us it is "inspired by the classic Chinese love story, "Butterfly Lovers," a beautiful tale of freedom, romance and inspiration."

The sunset orange of the butterfly wings contrasts with the pearly grey of the case making for a very beautiful calm scene. Smoothly incorporated into New York fashion week, models on Tam's show walked down the catwalk with the clutches in their hands.

Behind the butterfly case, it's a nice 10" notebook with all the smooth operation you'd expect of HP packing Windows 7, but only an Intel Atom chip and a not so stunning 5.5hr battery life.

It's a pricey £400 ($599). You could get similarly specced laptops for less of course, but it *is* a nice butterfly isn't it.

See Flickr for some more beauty shots of the notebook.

Vivienne Tam HP Mini, preorder $599 from Amazon

Computer makers Dell are making their offering in the tablet computer market small. Five inches small, it slices the size of its main rivals in half.

Their Mini 5 (aka Streak) faces competition from Apple's iPad and HP's Slate and it looks like it's hoping to outfoot the competition by cutting the size and price. That's what people want according to market research from Dell, quoted in the Wall Street Journal. John Thode Dell's vice president in charge of mobile devices told the WSJ what would make people want to buy a tablet computer:

"It's got to be inexpensive, it's got to be small, it's got to be thin, it's got to have long battery life," Thode says. He compared this middle device as something similar to navigation devices in cars.

According to Zdnet, the Mini 5 should be out in the middle of the year - it will run Android (possibly 1.6, possibly something newer), will have front and back facing cameras, a 1GHz Snapdragon processor and wifi and 3G.

Though the set-up sounds really good, and we love the Android OS, the price is rumoured to be about $1000 (£650) I.E. NOT THAT CHEAP. I wish it were a bit more affordable. More info on this as it comes out.

Related: Finally! a pocket that can take the iPad

Anyone hoping to make an internet start-up work should go for the mobile platform first, then do a standard website after, said technocrat and founder of the Geek Squad, Robert Stephens in an interesting interview with sustainablejournalism.org. Mobile is where it's at according to Stephens.

"If I were to advise a company on what to build going forward: don't build a website" he said. "Build a mobile app or interface first, and then build for the larger screens."

Geek Squad is a successful company founded in 94, that fix computers in person, or through 24hr phone and online services: but if he were starting up these days, Stephens said he'd do it differently: "I tell people now if I started the Geek Squad today I wouldn't start a computer repair company. I'd really develop a mobile development company." Stephens reckoned his advice was good for start-ups of any flavour, journalists for example.

The launch of the iPad had given the mobile computer market a huge boost and shown that that format size is not just about making phone calls.

"I don't know how much longer they'll be called phones but that's really the central device. Because most of us are moving and mobile, on the go. So our mobile device will be the one we interact with the most."

And the fact that its only got 3 inches of screen space can actually be a good thing...
"The last thing is that the constraint of the mobile screen is actually really liberating in that when you only have a small set of real estate to design your interface for, you can only put so many buttons. Just think of the Google start page, versus the AOL, the Yahoo startpage. Much cleaner."

Read the full interview on sustainablejournalism.org

The future's bright, the future's wide-screen, touch-sensitive and knows how you're feeling. Well according to netbook-makers ASUS anyway. They unveiled a range of concept products at CES yesterday: which they claim can adjust to your mood and emotions.

The three Waveface products: the Casa (an internet-ennabled TV); the Light (a tablet device); and the Ultra (a wrist-computer) use contextual information to provide you with more relevant information.

As Asus put it: the products "represent ASUS's context-based vision of the digital life; that every element in the users environment even down to the user's own physiology and emotional state can be sources of data to help deliver the right information and services at the right time".

Details are sketchy on exactly how they do it, lots of sensors we imagine, but this range certainly sounds intriguing. And they look cool too. Here's the Ultra:

And the Waveface Casa:

We'll post further if we hear about these becoming commercially available.

See more stories from CES 2010

All the big manufacturers at CES this year are knocking out rivals to Apple's forthcoming Tablet: call them tablets, slates, netbooks or what you will, this is the hot area in hardware.

Lenovo have brought in some heavy-hitting gadgets to this new niche. We already looked at the IdeaPad U1 Hybrid - half-laptop half-tablet, and another of their key products is the cute little Skylight.

It's a smartbook. If you can keep up with all the new names flying around, a smartbook is supposed to be a cross between a smartphone and a netbook. Lenovo say: "Skylight harnesses the best of smartphones and netbooks to create a new mobile consumer device." It's powered by a Snapdragon chipset, used in smartphones like Toshiba's TG01 and Google's new Nexus One, and designed to run rich functions on low power. That's ideal for mobile devices which need to economise on battery use and gives the Skylight a whopping 10 hours of battery life.

The Skylight is little, colourful and cute boasting all day battery life, robust wireless connectivity and a custom interface with live web gadgets (apps). Lenovo have already hooked up with network providers AT&T to link the Skylight up to their 3G mobile broadband network in the US.

Thinner than many smartphones, it has a high-definition 10 inch screen and comes in glossy lotus blue or earth red.

The Lenovo Skylight smartbook will be available starting in April in the U.S.It will be available in China and in Europe later this year. In the U.S., it will be sold through www.lenovo.com, www.att.com and AT&T retail stores. Pricing will start at $499 at full retail price.

See all stories from CES 2010 here

Half 'tablet' half laptop, Lenovo's new IdeaPad U1 Hybrid is a clamshell that you can take the screen off. Yes that's right, the screen is detachable and by itself it functions as a touch-screen tablet, giving the user two computers in one.

Each half has its own processor, operating system and battery that work together as a clamshell laptop or separately when the screen is functioning as a multitouch slate tablet.

Lenovo describe the technology as game-changing: "The IdeaPad U1 hybrid notebook is a game-changing technology in the PC industry that lets user switch their PC experience within a single device to match their dynamic lifestyle," said Liu Jun, senior vice president, Idea Product Group, Lenovo.

They claim it fuses the functionality of a notebook with the slate tablet's rich multitouch entertainment and mobile Internet experience.

The device has a 11.6 inch HD LED screen and runs Windows 7 off a powerful ARM processor chip. It's available in scarlet and weighs 1.8 pounds with the keyboard and 1.6 as a tablet.

The laptop base acts as a kind of dock for the tablet - which is meant for mobile use and has a 5hr battery life. Lenovo assures that the transition between the two is seamless.

Cool or what.

The Lenovo IdeaPad U1 hybrid notebook will be available in the US in summer 2010 with an estimated retail price of $999. The product will be available in the UK later in the year.

See all stories from CES 2010 here

Lenovo has released a new Thinkpad laptop aimed at home users. It's called the Edge and it comes in heat-wave red, the first time a Lenovo comes with a choice of colour.

Design is a key feature of the Edge which Lenovo describe as "progressive and strikingly clean". The keyboard has got a contemporary update, all minimalist black, with select models having illuminated keys. They're all spill-proof too. It has a larger and more sensitive touchpad, now multitouch, allowing fingers to pinch, zoom and scroll.

On the inside, the processors in the new Thinkpads come from chip-makers AMD rather than the more common Intel processors and a range of dual-core chips are available for the Edge: the Turion X2 and Athlon X2.

Edge Thinkpads also come with built in high resolution cameras, and preloaded Skype for making internet calls. Lenovo's ThinkVantage Technologies such as the Active Protection System and Rescue and Recovery are built into the laptops as well.

The ThinkPad Edge 13 inch, will be available immediately at approx £450 plus VAT through stores and www.lenovo.com. The 14 and 15 inch versions will be available starting in Spring 2010.

Those students know how to be funny. Apparently this young man was fed up with the clacking sound of other students' laptop keyboards in lectures and decided to protest by bringing in the ultimate clacking machine. A typewriter. Sadly the sound isn't great on this, but I think he was asked to leave for disturbing fellow students. The Irony.

EMBED-Student Brings Typewriter To Class - Watch more free videos

[via thedailywhat]

Laptop makers ViewSonic released a new range of computers today, ViewBooks.

Targeted at users on-the-move, the ViewBooks are thin and light but aim to be powerful, all-purpose computers. More unusually at the portable computer end of the market, the 12.1", 13.3" and 14" ViewBooks and the 13.3" ViewBook Pro run Windows 7. (Many cheaper netbooks operate on XP).

The flagship ViewBook Pro(13.3 inch screen) is available in black or silver. As the company claim... it "takes the ultra slim notebook experience to the next level". With a slim chassis forged from high-tech magnesium alloy, the notebook is 1.7cm thick and weighs only 1.6kg.

That's thin and light compared to say, a 13" MacBook Pro which is 2.41 cm thick and weighs 2.04 kg, despite having a slightly smaller screen. Though it's still 0.7cm thicker than the thinnest notebook on the market, Dell's freakishly skinny Adamo, at 0.99cm.

As for the rest of the range: the tiny ViewBook 120 with its 12.1" screen packs Windows 7 and a dual core chip, and is pretty impressive for something that size. The 120 is available in black and white. It's slightly more expensive than other netbooks that run on slower Atom processors but is reasonable and below the £500 mark at £469.

The ViewBook 120:

The larger versions, the 14" ViewBook 140 and the 13.3" ViewBook 130 ups the graphics and aesthetics on the 120.

ViewBook Pro - £699 / £729 here
ViewBook 140 - £629
ViewBook 130 - £499 / £569 / £649 here (according to the processor and chipset you choose)
ViewBook 120 - £469 here

Dell's strikingly slender Adamo XPS laptop is going exclusively to John Lewis this Christmas. Though it might be better known for homeware and hampers, John Lewis has a strong line in consumer electronics and snagging the sexy Adamo is a coup for the department store.

Adamo has always been Dell's haute design offering and the latest version of it, the XPS has a beautiful split back which hinges out into an elegant balancing position, lifting the whole computer off the desk and into a tilted open position.

It's also the thinnest laptop on the market - at 9.9mm thick, the whole computer is the size of a magazine and actually slenderer than some phones. I had a play around with an XPS last month and was pretty wowed by the looks, feel and the innovative hinge.

John Lewis are also stocking other key Dell products - the Studio 15, the Inspiron 14z and 15 laptops and the candy-coloured Inspiron Mini 10 netbooks.

More information on the Adamo XPS from Dell here.

The Adamo XPS will be selling for £1,750, it's already available in select John Lewis stores and will be available on www.johnlewis.com as of tomorrow.

Want to be more eco-conscious about how you use your computer?

Well there's a USB gadget to help you with that. The USB Eco Button doesn't allow you to do anything your computer doesn't already do - I mean - I bet there already is a power off and an energy-saver option on your computer... but the Eco Button just makes the power-save option more visible and so does make it easier for you to save power.

With 8-core chips being the current wunder-boys of the chip world, and with most new computers sold today featuring dual or quad-core chips, it may come as surprise that the new chips on the horizon aren't 12 or 18 core bits of silicon, but 100 core.

How the hell do they fit the extra 92 cores in?

I don't know, but a semi-conductor company called Tilera with connections to MIT university in Boston claims they do, and their 100 cores processors are expected to be on the market from early next year.

It's big, it's shiny and its got a subwoofer. The Pavilion dV8 Entertainment laptop - the new PC from HP is all about home entertaining at high quality.

With a 18.4-inch screen it's pushing into the desktop replacement category and with high-definition, an ultra-widescreen display and a built-in TV tuner it looks like it's also trying to replace your TV. Oh and there's a blu-ray disk reader as well.

Don't you dare just use this to watch drunk squirrel videos on Youtube.

Helloo... Adamo.

Two new images of the sexy high-end Adamo XPS from Dell have slipped out to the press. This computer is slim: 9.99mm to be exact. Check out the interesting balancing act it does when open, with the keyboard raised at a slant and only the edge of it and the bottom of the screen touching the table. Ooo.

MTV always makes me wish I was a bit cooler and had a neon hoodie. Now it's making me want a laptop. To be more precise - the official MTV Europe Awards 09 laptop.

Dell is sponsoring this year's MTV Europe Music Awards (EMAs) in Berlin, and to mark the occasion, it's launching a limited-edition laptop featuring the sexy case design you can see on the left.

Andrea mentioned the release of the W5900G Notino laptop from Hi Grade last week - we just got our hands on it today and thought we'd give it a quick refresh.

The big selling point of the W5900 is the design. The glossy hardback case of the W5900 looks a like collaboration between Gustav Klimt and Sex and the City. It's a picture of girls (on a catwalk? shopping?) in pretty little mosaic dresses.

I don't know if the gloss wears off, but it is shiny and there's a strange distorted fishnet background that gets a bit hypnotic if you keep looking at it. Anyway. There's also a pink leopard skin one, I like the sound of that, and a graffiti design. And the inside, with its white buttons, silver facing and blue details is pretty cute too.

Follow on after the jump