Here's a good book for all budding Gadget Masters that has only just come to my attention - 62 Projects to Make with a Dead Computer by Randy Sarafan, who is described as a New Media artist but may be better known to you through his work for the excellent Instructables.com.

Freescale's Mechatronics Robot, board and software allow users to experiment with acceleration, magnetic, pressure and touch sensors and microcontrollers as well as electromechanical control for industrial and consumer applications. Simple application development can be achieved in a completely programmable integrated development environment (IDE). No prior programming knowledge is needed to create embedded applications.

The future of the Symbian mobile operating system (OS) became clearer this week. Its creator Nokia has decided to outsource its Symbian software activities, which include 3,000 staff, to Accenture. This effectively resolves the uncertainty which had been hanging over the Symbian mobile OS and its development teams following Nokia’s decision to partner with Microsoft and to use Windows Phone as its main smartphone ...

Gennum has added Leading Light Technologies (L2Tek) as a design rep and distributor for its analogue and mixed-signal products in Northern Europe.

Once upon a time there was a fine semiconductor company which fell upon hard times and was sold to the French.

Smartphone revenues rose 15% in Q1 on a 13% increase in unit shipments, according to ABI Research. “Consistent demand for smartphones has become the major driver behind semiconductor market growth. In view of the return on investment (ROI) and the technological barriers to entry, many semiconductor vendors are contemplating merger and acquisition strategies to align their technologies for the future, ...

TSMC reported Q1 sales of $3.6bn down 4.3% from the $3.8bn of Q410 and 14.3% from the $3.2bn of Q110, for a net profit of $1.25bn. The company shipped 3.16m 8 inch equivalent wafers in the quarter. Gross margin was 49%, down 0.8% from 4Q10 and up 1.1% from 1Q10. For Q2, TSMC expects revenues of $3.8bn to $3.87bn with ...

ON Semiconductor has added to its range of silicon-based crystal oscillator clocks modules with dual voltage capabilities and frequency stability as low as ±20 parts per million

No matter what you do in hardware to save power, software is always there to trip you up. One of the complaints about the early smartphones from the chipmakers was that the operating system vendors did little to active the power-saving features in their chipsets – it took time for them to use the hooks that were present all along. ...

The Embedded Masterclass has announced that Intel is to be the headline sponsor at the event this year. The Embedded Masterclass exhibition and conference covers microprocessor technology, debug and development tools and embedded software. This year’s event will take place at Bar Hill, near Cambridge on Wed 5th October. “We are very pleased to have Intel on board,” said David ...