I'm Watch creator explains order fulfillment process, offers 15 percent discount for your patience
We all know that Android 1.6
isn't getting any newer, but it's now clear that customers pining for the
I'm Watch will need to dig deeply and muster a final bit of tolerance. According to the Italian smartwatch creator, it's made a few changes to the device, primarily to allow for greater application compatibility -- hopefully this means something other than a stale Donut. As for delivery, the company will send out 300 I'm Watches by June 15th and will then use the next month to solicit feedback and conduct final tests. By July 15th, the company will resume delivery for its outstanding orders and expects to fulfill all current orders no later than September 15th. Customers who'd prefer to back out from the deal will have until July 15th to apply for a refund from the company, and as a goodwill gesture, it's offering a 15 percent discount for all those willing to endure the wait. For the complete details, just hop the break.
[Thanks, Darrell]
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Club Jameco borrows from Etsy and Kickstarter, lets DIYers design, sell and buy project kits
Though electronics hobbyists may not have the same resources that the
Maker Sheds of the world have to design, package and sell do-it-yourself kits, electronics component distributor Jameco plans to change that. With Club Jameco, enthusiasts can pitch their kit ideas to the electronic component wizards in Belmont, CA and if a project is deemed viable for production, they'll be provided with feedback and have their idea posted for public comment. After the creation of step-by-step kit instructions, a list of materials and undergoing final approval, kits will be sold to the adoring masses. Once projects roll off production lines and into garages, creators will be paid royalties anywhere from five to ten percent based on quarterly sales. Aside from giving DIYers another sales avenue, it's also an opportunity for those who've been wary of piecing together projects to finally dive in
sans the added fuss. Hankering to propose a bundle of your own? Per usual, all the particulars can be found in the source link below.
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Nielsen: Americans have 28 percent more mobile apps in 2012, look down on the web with disdain
It's not hard to see that Americans
love their mobile apps, and
Nielsen can now tell us by how much. The average US smartphone owner circa mid-2012 now brandishes 41 apps, a pretty hefty 28 percent increase from a year earlier. They're preferring native apps to the web, as well: they're more likely to spend time with that direct port of
Cut the Rope than
the HTML5 version. Along with reminding us that smartphone owners are
now in the majority in the country, Nielsen has added that there's a total of 84 million Android and iOS users in the US, or more than double what we saw just a year ago. We're a bit disappointed that the figures mostly exclude BlackBerry and Windows Phone owners, although they still paint a picture of a country that's entirely comfortable in its smartphone shoes.
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Hillcrest Labs open sources Kylo web browser for TVs, hopes the people want one
We didn't hear much from
Hillcrest Labs' Kylo web browser for TVs after it launched in 2010, but now the company is apparently turning its fate over to the community. A Mozilla-based browser, Kylo will work with any mouse but is designed specifically for its Freespace pointer controls. It's available under the Mozilla Public License which means others can use it for commercial products, but so far web connected products have been slow to take off and even Google TV has had trouble pushing a typical browser experience on HDTVs. Interested devs can snag the code at Kylo.tv or GitHub, we'll see if anyone builds anything with more market impact.
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Rogers and CIBC make joint deal for NFC mobile payments in Canada, let you check out with your BlackBerry
Canadians sometimes can't catch a break: while NFC payments have been relatively common for
Americans,
Europeans and certainly the
Japanese, Canucks have had to largely make do paying with ye olde credit carde.
Rogers and national bank CIBC want to put an end to these antediluvian ways: starting later this year, CIBC card holders will just need to swipe an NFC-equipped BlackBerry like the Bold 9900 (
Bold 9930 for CDMA-loving Americans) at a matching terminal to pay at a given store. The only special requirement is a secure SIM card that gives customers the freedom to change phones, even if it does create problems switching banks or carriers down the line. We're just hoping that Android and other platforms get the same treatment and let more of our Canadian friends pay for poutine that much faster.
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HTC confirms One X multitasking tweaks in Sense 4
There's been quite a bit of brouhaha over at
xda-developers lately about changes HTC's made to the way multitasking behaves on the
One X compared to stock
Ice Cream Sandwich. We're not just talking about obvious UI tweaks here --
Sense 4's horizontal, card-like arrangement vs. Android 4.0's default vertical list -- but actual differences in memory and task management. While we're not running into any problems with our One X review unit, some users have noticed that background app are getting terminated too aggressively, so we reached out to HTC for comment. Here's what the company said:
HTC is aware of some questions in the enthusiast community about how the HTC One X handles multitasking and memory management for background apps. We value the community's input and are always looking for ways to enhance customers' experience with our devices. That said, multitasking is operating normally according to our custom memory management specifications which balance core ICS features with a consistent HTC Sense experience.
There you have it. HTC's definitely implemented some multitasking tweaks on handsets running Sense 4. Perhaps this is why battery life is so impressive on
AT&T's One X? While we don't believe this is going to be an issue for most users, there's always the option of installing custom ROMs now that the phone's
been rooted.
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Apple slips out new OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion beta, leaves 2007 MacBook Pro in a momentary lurch
Apple looks to be stepping up the frequency of OS X
Mountain Lion beta updates after initially keeping the pace slow and steady: it just posted a new, unceremoniously titled 12A206J build for developers. What the update fixes in the
Developer Preview isn't clear, but there are still glitches with Fast User Switching, Java applets, sharing menus and Notes syncing with iTunes, among a handful of other showstoppers. There's also a major heads-up for those who own
mid-2007 MacBook Pros, as they can't properly run Mountain Lion at all until another update. We wouldn't be surprised if there's another fix in store ahead of
WWDC next month, and there's still all of the summer left for Apple to put the final polish on the OS and make its release target.
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Plastic Logic shutters US offices, gets out of making its own e-readers
Plastic Logic has something of a rollercoaster history, having had to
drop the QUE proReader before it even shipped and getting a
$700 million cash injection that ultimately swung its attention to
Russian schoolchildren. Unfortunately, the UK company's dreams of a self-branded e-reader are closing down along with its US branch. About 40 jobs are being cut in Mountain View, California, along with a smaller amount at its still-active British, German and Russian offices. The reduced headcount swings the focus to supplying e-paper screens to other companies, several of which are currently in talks. We're never fans of job cuts, but there is a silver lining to this cloud: the company's new
flexible color e-reader screen could show up in more devices than it would have otherwise.
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Google bots learning to read webpages like humans, one step closer to knowing everything
Google just launched its
Knowledge Graph, a tool intended to deliver more accurate information by analyzing the way users search. Of course, with a desire to provide better search results comes a need for improved site-reading capabilties. JavaScript and
AJAX have traditionally put a wrench in Google bots' journey through a webpage, but it looks like the search engine has developed some smarter specimens. While digging through Apache logs, a developer spotted evidence that bots now execute the JavaScript they encounter -- and rather than just mining for URLS, the crawlers seem to be mimicking how users click on objects to activate them. That means bots can dig deeper into the web, accessing databases and other content that wasn't previously indexable. Looks like Google is one step closer to success on its quest to know everything.
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Sony NEX-F3 and A37 cameras hands-on and sample shots
Sony's newest
NEX and DSLR have already graced these pages -- albeit in decidedly
unofficial fashion -- but the time has come for this duo of shooters to be revealed to the world with the blessing of their maker. In case you didn't catch the earlier leaks, the NEX-F3 is the replacement for the much-beloved
NEX-C3 as the entry-level ILC from Sony, while the A37 slots in the same place in the company's Alpha DSLR lineup. Sony's also rolling out fresh glass for each this July, in the form of an E-mount 18-200mm, F3.5-6.3 zoom lens for $850, and an 18-135mm F3.5-5.6 A-mount telephoto unit that'll set you back $500. Both the NEX-F3 and A37 will come with kit 18-55mm lenses and cost $600 when they go on sale in June, which makes them quite competitively priced as
compared to their
competition. An enviable pricing position, to be sure, but can they deliver the imaging goods? Well, we spent time with each on a tour of San Francisco recently, so join us after the break for our impressions and some sample photos.
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LG's Optimus LTE2 ships this week in Korea, nails down a few more specs
Just in case the world
forgot which phone was first with 2GB of RAM, LG has pushed out another press release for its
Optimus LTE2 which ships this week in Korea, just as promised. The detailed specs reveal this version ships with a 4.7-inch
True HD IPS LCD, and while many of its specs (8MP camera, 1.5GHz dual-core CPU) are identical to its predecessor, it weighs in at an extra 10g, likely owing to the larger 2,150mAh battery. As mentioned previously it also has support for wireless charging and, naturally, the
Optimus UI 3.0 detailed earlier. There's still no word on when we'll see this one outside of Korea but for now a few specs and pictures will have to hold us over.
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NTT DoCoMo's Galaxy S III to ship with 2GB RAM?
Ah, Japan. That far east country what begot Mario most always gets to profit from the industry's more delightful excesses. This time, however, the spoils have less to do with
gaming flash and more to do with smartphone specs. In a document recently released by
NTT DoCoMo, the carrier's upcoming
dual-core Galaxy S III variant is listed as doubling up on the available RAM, bypassing the standard 1GB announced at its official unveiling. It's not the first time we've seen an OEM shoot for the silicone stars, considering
LG's headline-stealing
Optimus LTE2 and monstrous
LS970, so the swap could be likely. Nothing's set in stone quite yet, but given this is Samsung's flagship wünderphone, we doubt the company wants to be caught playing in its Korean rival's forward-looking wake.
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Google Music users granted de-authentication reprieve as company retools activation system
Google Music users learned of
a frightful new policy this morning that dictates a user may de-authorize only four devices in a year, out of ten total activations. While the policy is likely to go unnoticed by the majority of consumers, it instantly created a great pain for those who regularly flash ROMs to their phones and tablets. It seems the road to de-authorization hell is paved with good intentions, however, as Google has since responded to critics with the revelation that it'll introduce an activation system that accounts for such nuances.
We've determined through our own experimentation that Google has temporarily suspended the de-authorization limit of four devices, and while it's difficult to know how long this reprieve will last, we're hopeful that it'll remain in effect until Google implements this new system to recognize duplicate authorizations. Additionally, we've learned through our conversations with the company that users may, in fact, sign in to their Google Music account from any number of devices, and it's only when a tune is deliberately streamed that your smartphone or tablet will be added to the list of ten.
What's more, while the company was rather insistent that songs couldn't be streamed to multiple devices at the same time, it seems that Google's system of checks and balances is spotty at best -- we were able to simultaneously stream tunes to three devices without so much as a hiccup. Yes, the system eventually shook its finger at us, but it serves as a nice reminder to have fun while the insanity lasts.
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Sprint's Android users get carrier billing in Google Play
American Android users started getting
carrier billing in Google Play early this month through T-Mobile (and later AT&T), and now Sprint can join the party. Any app, book, music or video purchase can be tacked on to the monthly bill for your
EVO 4G LTE instead of going through Google. The move leaves Verizon as the only major US carrier without a carrier billing option, so you'll have to sit tight if you own the original US
Galaxy Nexus and hate the thought of a separate download bill. We've also heard nothing about regional carriers being on the roadmap, but we'll keep you posted.
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Razer's Ouroboros gaming mouse outed by the FCC, transforms to fit lefties
Looking for a rodent to help you frag your way through the competition,
southpaw style? The FCC may have just uncovered your new best friend: The Razer Ouroboros gaming mouse. Like the
Cyborg RAT series, the Ouroboros features a sliding palm rest and swappable side panels to better fit your mitt. Unlike the RAT, however, Razer's rodent is completely symmetrical, and therefor, ambidextrous. While Ouroboros may not actually
devour its tail, it can at least detach it, switching between wired and wireless modes with relative ease. The versatile vermin appears to pack nine buttons (the regular left and right triggers, three buttons on each side, plus the mouse wheel), a toggle for on-the-fly DPI adjustments, left / right trigger locks, compatibility for Windows 7
and MAC OS X and a charging stand. No word yet on the device's max DPI sensitivity or price point, but we'll let you know when
Razer makes things official. In the meantime, feel free to browse the rodent's manual at the source link below.
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Samsung ships QF20 camcorder with WiFi, toughened-up W300 pocket cam
Samsung's CES blitz included a tease of
five new camcorders, but precious little in the way of launch details. Some of the mystery has ended, as two of the
camcorders -- the QF20 and W300 -- are at last hitting US stores. The QF20 caters to the Internet crowd and, for $350, will let you upload your 20x-zoomed 1080p videos straight to Facebook, Picasa or YouTube without thrusting a computer into the process. If you're more concerned about your camera surviving a rafting trip than producing viral videos, the W300 will give you dustproofing, 15-foot waterproofing and 6-foot shockproofing in a pocketable form for a more frugal $160. We're still waiting on launches for the camcorders' closely-related F80, Q20 and W350 (pictured) cousins, but for now you can catch full details of the QF20 and W300 after the break.
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Intel launches youth-focused iQ webzine, tells its brand story through aggregation
It's like
Highlights for kids, but with a decidedly techno-centric spin. The company known more for what it's put
inside our gadgetry has just unveiled a new digital magazine,
iQ, intended for the youthful, über-connected masses. Looking much like
Flipboard in design and borrowing a
live tile-ish approach, the internally-curated
Intel webzine culls content from outside pubs and mixes it in with original and partner-contributed pieces to, as EIC Bryan Rhoads puts it, "tell... the bigger story of who we are as a brand." Indeed, it may do just that via the circuitous route of social recommendations, given that each news box grows in prominence along with its viral importance. There's no paid or free app to download, just a simple URL to link you to that dynamic "front page." So, if you feel your angst-ridden teenagers are in need of an industry-specific educational focus, this might be one site to add to their bookmarks.
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Netflix web streaming interface gets a new look with bigger icons, embedded previews
With the exception of tweaks for new features like
HD video and
closed captioning Netflix's
Silverlight-based web player has been largely unchanged for years, but today everything is being reworked. As detailed in a post on the company's blog, PC and Mac users (no word on
ChromeOS) the size of the player controls now scale to the window they're in and replace words with icons. Other new features users will notice is the ability to preview additional episodes of TV series without stopping the stream, title information that pops up when the stream is paused and that full screen viewing now has the same options as the windows player. The finale tweak is that the back to browsing button that brings viewers back to their queue has shifted from the bottom right to the top left. Hit the blog for the full breakdown, or just expect a surprise tomorrow when you're watching
Downton Abbey at work
Drive in the comfort of your own home during leisure time.
[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
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The mysteries of the CCD revealed (video)
Sure, we've explained to you why
sensor size matters in a digital camera, but maybe you need to take it back a bit. Maybe, you're not entirely sure how those sensors work in the first place. Well, Bill Hammack, better known as
The Engineer Guy, is here to help. After breaking down
LCDs and
hard drives for your amusement and education, Bill has turned his attention to the CCD. The charge-coupled device is the heart and soul of many a digital camera, turning incoming photons into a charge that the impressively complex processor inside can convert into an image. What makes the CCD so impressive is it's rather ingenious solutions to problems such as interference (no wires, just a shift register) and color reproduction (pixel-sized filters and a hue-flattening algorithm). For more, check out the video after the break.
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Samsung considering a 13-inch, 1080p, PLS panel, display snobs get their hopes up
It's a ritual: we publish a review of a laptop with a 1366 x 768 display, the best-rated comment is from someone crying out for 1600 x 900 -- nay, 4K resolution. If you're in the latter camp, you're going to be disappointed by even this article, but for those of you who've merely been craving something,
anything crisper than mere HD, we have some hope: Samsung is mulling the idea of a 13-inch,
PLS display with a 1920 x 1080 pixel count. Earlier today a company rep told a group of reporters that the PC division is
considering a 1080p panel of that size, which would be unusual, to say the least. The outfit isn't ready to make any promises, much less commit to an ETA, though we can't say we'd be surprised if the company made such a display for its 13-inch laptops first -- after all, for instance, some of its 13-inch panels make use of IPS-like PLS technology, whereas its 15-inch ones don't
yet. We'll let you decide if that's even necessary -- both the
13- and
15-inch Series 9 already have 1600 x 900 resolution -- but suffice to say, the company has a good track record of squeezing in extra pixels when other ultraportable makers
don't.
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Google's latest Gmail tweaks bring contact info to search results, enhanced Circle integration
By any means, this is certainly far from being
one of the biggest changes Gmail's ever seen -- still, it's one that's likely to make a few tasks a wee bit easier for you. Inside the recent tweaks, Google added a new quick access trait that makes contact details -- such as phone numbers -- show up automatically in search results within your cherished G inbox. Additionally, the Android-maker has improved the Google+ integration (
again), now allowing folks to narrow down conversations from specific Circles in the search box (you know, something like
Circle: Awesome Engadget editors). Google says the changes will be rolling out over the course of the day, but in the meantime, you could always check out
what exactly happens behind Gmail's closed doors.
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HBO Go on Roku, Samsung and Xbox opens up to Time Warner (and possibly others) tomorrow?
HBO subscribers currently locked out of streaming
HBO Go to their connected TV devices (namely
Samsung HDTVs / Blu-ray players,
Roku boxes and
Xbox 360s) could be in for a treat soon, as our sources indicate
Time Warner Cable is preparing to announce access for its customers on all three platforms tomorrow. There's also a few small pics of the updated menus for Xbox 360 and Roku flashing the TWC logo, as well as currently unsupported providers Bright House Networks (both), as well as DirecTV and Comcast (Roku). We've contacted both HBO and Time Warner Cable for comment but have not received a response yet, but we'll keep an eye out for an expanded activation menus hitting our devices soon.
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Visualized: Android's device diversity cut up into 3,997 little pieces
Some call it
diversity, some call it
fragmentation. However you slice it, there's a lot of Android devices out there.
OpenSignalMaps has tracked a staggering 3,997 unique phones, tablets and other Google-powered gadgets, and has put them into a chart weighted by popularity. Not surprisingly, it's powerhouses like Samsung's
Galaxy S II and HTC's
Desire line that dictate the platform, while that Concorde Tab you bought in Hungary sadly doesn't have much traction. The normally signal mapping-oriented crew is careful to warn that the actual variety might be less: there's 1,363 one-timers in the group, and some of those may be custom ROMs and the
endless carrier-specific variants that OEMs are sometimes eager to make. There's even more to look at through the source, including Android 2.3's continuing dominance and the mind-boggling number of Android screen resolutions, so click ahead for an even fuller picture.
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Porsche 918 Spyder prototype returns to the road with polished black and white shell
It may not be the first time
Porsche's 918 plug-in hybrid has
had a chance to flex its 770 horse power for the camera, but when we last saw the
pricey insanely expensive speed demon strut its stuff on record, it certainly didn't look like this. The freakish prototype has emerged as a beautiful, high-performance vision of efficiency, blasting its way past 100 kilometers of terrain for every three liters of petrol (78 miles/gallon). The
$845,000 machine pairs a combustion engine with electric motors to achieve that consumption rating, and sports a carbon-fiber reinforced-plastic monocoque (self-supporting) shell, rear-axle steering and that unique upward-venting exhausted system that you may have noticed in the shot above. The 918 Spyder is slated for its initial production run beginning in September of 2013, with the first models making their way to US customers late next year. It's time to start saving -- just
a few thousand blog posts to go.
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Viacom and Time Warner Cable call truce, TWC TV mobile apps will stream Colbert after all
Good news ahoy if you've liked Time Warner Cable's
TWC TV streaming app but were frustrated with
content providers pulling channels over licensing rights: the cable giant and Viacom have reached a settlement that will see Viacom's channels return to your Android or iOS gear. Comedy Central, CMT, MTV and other channels will be back in the next several weeks, and the two sides even managed to bury the hatched over "unrelated business matters," according to a joint statement. Just what led to the about-face is being kept secret, although Viacom's tendency to
sue over retransmission rights in the digital realm raises the possibility that TWC had to fork over an extra amount. At least now you can watch
The Daily Show on your iPad knowing your cable provider and the studio are singing "Kumbaya."
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Boost Mobile set to offer Smith Micro's Visual Voicemail features starting on May 31st
Up until now, the
Boost Mobile crowd's been missing out on those fancy visual voicemail creations, but that's about to change starting on May 31st. Earlier today, Smith Micro announced it's delivering its Visual Voicemail features to the prepaid-friendly carrier, with the upcoming Boost-branded
HTC EVO Design 4G being the first slab to offer said tidbits. Smith Micro is also adding an optional service dubbed "Voicemail-to-Text," which -- for an extra $1.99 per month -- will essentially turn those vocal messages into words and send them to you via text message or email. With the launch of the "
four-gee" waves in mind, we're certain you're enjoying all the incoming news of late.
Continue reading Boost Mobile set to offer Smith Micro's Visual Voicemail features starting on May 31st
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Rare Commodore KIM-1 hits eBay, shows you the PET's barebones roots
Most of us think of
Commodore's pre-
C64 computing history in terms of the still-legendary PET-2001, but an eBay auction run by Lawrence Bezuska shows just how far back the tradition really goes. He's selling a KIM-1, the stripped-down hobbyist computer from Chuck Peddle that was the foundation for what the PET became. It's so old that it was originally made by MOS Technologies in 1976 -- Commodore bought the company and kept making the KIM-1 until 1981. Inside, you're still looking at a 6502 chip, although you get just 1.12Kb of RAM and lose more than a few things that even DIY enthusiasts take for granted today, such as a power supply. There's no way you'll
play Doom on it, then, but the winning bidder does get the luxury of a keypad just inches away from bare circuitry. If you're quick enough to make the May 17th auction deadline and miss the days of very, very low-level programming, be sure to check the source link.
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Eton anticipates next natural disaster with self-powered FRX radios
Eton, the name behind
solar-powered sound systems and
emergency radios, is updating its disaster-preparedness portfolio with the new FRX series of self-powered radios. The FRX 1, FRX 2 and FRX 3 use hand-turbine energy to keep the internal lithium ion battery juiced, and all include a glow-in-the-dark indicator, LED flashlight and DC input. While the FRX 1 offers only the basic components, the FRX 2 and 3 have solar panels for recharging, along with a headphone jack and a USB port for powering other gadgets. The FRX 3 boasts a digital alarm and radio -- as opposed to the analog radio on the FRX 2 -- and a display for receiving NOAA weather alerts. Eton priced the radios at $25, $40 and $60, respectively, and it's currently selling the three options with American Red Cross co-branding at outlets such as Amazon, Best Buy and REI. Realizing your crank-powered Raptor is on its last legs? Check out the PR past the break.
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X-mini KAI capsule Bluetooth speaker review
Speakers these days! They are
everywhere, in constantly evolving iterations, smaller and more versatile than ever before. Singaporean manufacturer
X-mini has a pretty good foothold in this game with a consistent brand message of "Sound Beyond Size." That indicates the portability, mass, and reproductive capacity of its products in a pretty nebulous fashion, so we decided to grab its latest offering, the Bluetooth-toting KAI, and place it in our real lives for a few months. It's available now for $99, which will take it off the table for many casual listeners, but those who crave what's next in distributed audio might find KAI to be quite the ear-opener. We got pretty close with it (but not
weird close), and we have a couple of things to say about that whole size / sound relationship they're so keen on.
Continue reading X-mini KAI capsule Bluetooth speaker review
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Motorola Droid 4 gets leaked ICS build, official Android 4.0.4 may soon follow
We've known
for quite some time that Motorola intended to push
Ice Cream Sandwich to the
Droid 4, but until now the waiting game continued, with no end in sight. It now appears that the smartphone maker is making serious progress on its own Motoblur-infused flavor of ICS, with a stock version of the upgrade making the rounds since last night. According to early adopters, the build seems to enable complete functionality, but upgrading early will leave your device locked to 4.0.4, with no option for future updates. So, for now, it makes sense to hang tight, but it'd be reasonable to assume that Moto-sanctioned ICS is indeed on its way to the Droid 4. Impatient owners will find everything they need at the source link after the break.
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RunCore InVincible SSD wipes data away with the click of a button
This one goes out to all the Bonds in the world.
RunCore, a Chinese company specializing in the production of
solid state drives, has cooked up a SATA II solution that should satisfy even the most guarded of privacy fanatics. Living up to its grandiose InVincible moniker, this aptly-named SSD's built to endure extreme temperatures ranging from -45 to 95 degrees Celsius (or -49 to 203 degrees Fahrenheit), read / write data at speeds up to 240Mbps / 140Mbps and protect your 1s and 0s from prying, less-than-reputable eyes. How so? Well, the drive's actual pièce de espionnite aiguë (that's fancy for paranoiac fail safe) incorporates a dual-button scheme for clearing away data. Users, much like Neo in ye 'ole Matrix, will have two colored choices to make: select the green button for "intelligent elimination" (aka overwriting of data) or opt for the "less subtle method" offered by the red button which applies a current to the NAND flash memory for actual physical destruction of your data. So, whether you're a high-ranking government official, a spy
unlike us or just someone who can't help but look over his / her shoulder, rest assured your secrets can now be safely disposed of. Jump past the break to check out the outfit's informational video and its woefully out of sync audio track.
Continue reading RunCore InVincible SSD wipes data away with the click of a button
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Motorola Motosmart Mix XT550 masks its middling specs with a set of nice headphones
HTC may be
over the idea of including premium earbuds with its smartphones, but
Motorola is stepping up to give it the ol' college try with its Motosmart Mix XT550. The phone will sell in
China for ¥1,699 and is targeted at "people who really care about music." Along with the bundled set of headphones, you'll also discover a dedicated button to open the Sina Micro Music application. Beyond these selling points, however, the handset is a bit behind the curve. The XT550 features Android 2.3.6, a Qualcomm MSM7255A SoC with an 800MHz CPU, 512MB of RAM, a 3-megapixel camera and a 4-inch, HVGA display. On a positive note, the 1,735mAh battery is said to provide up to 30 hours of music playback. All things considered, however, we're inclined to agree: you'd have to "really care about music" to spring for this one. Undeterred? You'll find the full PR after the break.
Continue reading Motorola Motosmart Mix XT550 masks its middling specs with a set of nice headphones
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Comcast switches on Skype on Xfinity in Boston and Seattle today, eight more metros this week
Now you can
Skype on Xfinity, and beyond. Comcast's
re-branded cable arm is touting a new trick beginning today, with customers in Boston and Seattle among the first to have access to the new
Skype on Xfinity videoconferencing service (Atlanta, Augusta, Ga., Chicago, Detroit, Harrisburg, Pa., Indianapolis, Miami and Pittsburgh will be online by the end of the week). Interested parties can add a $9.95 monthly fee to their Triple Play service to take advantage, enabling "free" (read: $10-per-month) instant messaging and video chatting services. That monthly fee will presumably cover the requisite
all-in-one kit, which includes an adaptor, a "high-quality" camera and a spiffy new Skype-enabled remote control with an IM-friendly keyboard on the rear. Naturally, your bud on the other end doesn't need any special equipment, unless of course they plan to chat through their HDMI-capable Comcast box as well. Eligible customers can hit up the source link past the break to sign up, and breeze through the attached PR for a bit more detail.
Continue reading Comcast switches on Skype on Xfinity in Boston and Seattle today, eight more metros this week
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Editorial: Thin laptops are the new mainstream, but what about battery life?
Bandwagons, trains and Tranes. Can't say that these three have a heck of a lot in common in most regards, but one thing's for sure: trying to stop this trio would be a Herculean task. And so it goes with laptops -- once upon a time, it was good enough to have something that
resembled a portable tower, but these days, the ability to even see the chassis at all feels like a negative. I exaggerate, of course, but the proverbial race in the laptop world is hardly about price; it's about
thinness. Intel's
unstoppable quest to plaster the
Ultrabook term as far and wide as possible has led to a change in the way consumers are viewing portable machines, and Apple's devilishly thin
MacBook Air certainly played a role, too. What we're left with is a very curious priority list, and I'm wondering if too many OEMs have stopped to wonder if the "obvious" is indeed the "right."
I'll be the first to confess that I love the look of thin. Samsung's
Series 9 and Acer's
Aspire S5 might just be two of the sexiest machines to ever be built, and Dell's
original Adamo was primarily of interest due to one thing: its jaw-droppingly thin frame. But there's some saying about putting form before function that seems to apply here, particularly when keying in on battery life. I've no doubt that the marketing and research teams for PC makers far and wide understand the realities of the market place, and perhaps the average consumer really doesn't need more than four to six hours of life on a single charge. Five years ago, squeezing that much life from machines under an inch thick would've required some sort of wizardry that exists only in a rarely visited corner of West Hollywood. But today, I'm a dreamer. And I'm dreaming of a laptop with "all day battery life" -- something that could be screamed from the rooftops, and honestly, something that could probably be accomplished tomorrow if our laptop options weren't on
such a diet.
Continue reading Editorial: Thin laptops are the new mainstream, but what about battery life?
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Verizon CFO says grandfathered unlimited plans on the way out
Verizon Communications CFO
Fran Shammo shattered many a hopes and dreams today speaking at the J.P. Morgan Technology, Media and Telecom conference. During his address, Shammo indicated that customers who have been grandfathered in to the unlimited data plan may soon find themselves pushed into tiered territory, with the debut of the carrier's
shared data plans. "Everyone will be on data share," Shammo said, clarifying that, "a lot of our 3G base is on unlimited... [and] when they migrate off 3G they will have to go to data share." Obviously, with many customers clinging desperately to their truly unlimited usage in the shift to
LTE, such a move would ruffle more than a few feathers. It's not clear if this will affect customers who have already made the leap to LTE devices or if it will be limited to customers migrating from 3G phones after a
particular cut off date. We've reached out to Verizon for comment, but so far Big Red is keeping mum. We'll just have to take Shammo at his word for now. We hope you like data caps. To hear the comments in full hit up the source link.
Update: We just finished listening through the entire webcast (we're still waiting for the transcript) and found the quote that is going to make most customers shake their fists in anger:
"LTE is our anchor point for data share. So, as you come through an upgrade cycle and you upgrade in the future, you will have to go on to the data share plan. And moving away from, if you will, the unlimited world and moving everyone into a tiered structure data share plan."
Doesn't get much clearer than that, but we're still hoping Verizon will come back and say Shammo was speaking out of turn... fingers crossed.
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Evernote 4.0 for Android sweeps in new home screen, list UI (video)
'Tis the season for
major Android app remakes, this time with
Evernote going for a much appreciated adaptation to a more swipe-friendly universe. The 4.0 update of the note-taking app has a new home screen that lets you swipe out a hidden menu to get to your notes without having to always jump backwards -- one of our pet peeves. Much of the overall navigation now leans towards swipes over buttons, and the list views for notes and notebooks are a good deal simpler. Combined with new contextual action bars, the revamp puts the text, audio and photo recorder much more at home in the
Android 4.0 era than earlier versions. It still requires just Android 1.6, so nearly anyone can take a look by visiting the Google Play link below.
Continue reading Evernote 4.0 for Android sweeps in new home screen, list UI (video)
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Google launches Knowledge Graph today, wants to understand real things (video)
Americans and Brits might chuckle at their respective understandings of words like chips, pants and biscuits -- a search engine, however, can't be quite so discerning. As it turns out,
Google actually thinks it can, and has been working on its Knowledge Graph project to prove it. Beginning today, English searches from Google.com might start seeing a new box appearing alongside (unless you happened to see it
via the live-trial). If there is more than one potential meaning to your search term, Google will ask you to specify (trousers, not underwear, for example). Likewise, when it's more confident it knows what you mean, you'll get a summary box instead. (A celebrities place of birth, favorite cheese etc..)
Google's Shashidhar Thakur, tech lead for search, told us "We think of this as our pragmatic approach to
semantic search." And by pragmatic, he means that for the last two years, Google has been working to map the "Universe of things," not just webpages. Over 500 million
things, in fact, creating a total of 3.5 billion attributes and connections so far. The hope is, that as this technology evolves, you'll be able to ask more complex questions, like "Which US airports have a Cinnabon stall." Or, you know, other such deep and meaningful queries. If you see some info, and happen to know better, there's a feedback system, so you can let Google know, hopefully making Knowledge Graph continually evolve in accuracy. While it's only rolling out for English searches, it's not just desktop, with mobile and tablet search getting the goods too. There are plans to spread this out to other languages, but no specific dates for this just now.
Continue reading Google launches Knowledge Graph today, wants to understand real things (video)
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LG shows off UI 3.0 for Ice Cream Sandwich devices, says it's 'unobtrusive and simple'
Love them or hate them, those
ubiquitous Android skins aren't going anywhere any time soon. Now the latest one to make an entrance to the overlay game is LG's UI 3.0, which the Korean outfits says
will make the overall experience of its handsets easier, speedier and "more convenient." The new UI brings features such as a novel drag anywhere-style lock screen, an Icon Customizer for setting your own photos as icons / shortcuts, a revamped Pattern Lock that lets you preset apps for quicker launch and a Voice Shutter trait for taking snaps via voice commands -- à la
Sammy S Voice. UI 3.0 is set to make its debut next week with the launch of LG's
Optimus LTE II in Korea, while the
Optimus 4X HD will also come sporting the fresh skin once it launches in June.
Continue reading LG shows off UI 3.0 for Ice Cream Sandwich devices, says it's 'unobtrusive and simple'
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Prototype 3D display maintains resolution, bumps viewing angles, spans dimensions
If
3D has a future in our pockets, then it must be one that requires no spectacles. Not only are the goggles an issue, other key factors like resolution and viewing angles all need to be bettered before it stands a chance of broad adoption. NLT technology knows this, and has prototyped a 3.1-inch 3D LCD display that not only matches 2D resolution (as we've
seen before,) but also offers up to six viewing angles. The display is based on existing
horizontal double-density pixel technology with "HxDP" (horizontally x times-density pixels,) a new technology for creating multiple viewpoints, thrown into the mix. Standard HDDP gives a 3D image two viewpoints, HxDP allows more depending on density of sub-pixels. It also allows for both 2D and 3D images to be on-screen at the same time, meaning you can decide which version of Alvin and the Chipmunks
Chipwrecked you prefer side-by-side.
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