Ask Engadget: best / most 'open' e-book store?
We know you've got questions, and if you're brave enough to ask the world for answers, then here's the outlet to do so. This week's
Ask Engadget inquiry is from Arthur, who's considering giving this new-fangled electronic book thing a go. If you're looking to ask one of your own, drop us a line at
ask [at] engadget [dawt] com.
"During a recent move, I dumped a dozen boxes of books at goodwill, and have decided to give e-books a try. But what's the most "open" way to buy them? Me and my wife want to share titles (reasonable enough, given that we wouldn't buy two copies from a bookstore). As such, we'd like to open an account somewhere that will let us read on our various computers, PlayBook, iPad and Nook. Is there a store that you can suggest?"
Given your humble narrator's long-held resistance to e-books (and devotion to building a library of their own), this is one we're going to pass straight over to the Engadget community. So, dear friends, what's your opinion?
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Mobile Miscellany: week of February 18th, 2013
If you didn't get enough mobile news during the week, not to worry, because we've opened the firehose for the truly hardcore. This week brought confirmation of Pantech's next phone for Verizon, legal battles over the airwaves in India and a new smartphone to Virgin Mobile. These stories and more await after the break. So buy the ticket and take the ride as we explore the "
best of the rest" for this week of February 18th, 2013.
Filed under:
Cellphones,
Wireless,
Mobile
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Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0 preview: an 8-inch S Pen tablet that's also a phone
An
updated, larger Galaxy Note from
Samsung was inevitable. Given the undeniable popularity of mid-size tablets (see:
Apple iPad mini), it's no surprise the Korean electronics giant would want to strengthen its foothold in a category it helped create. It was just three short years ago that Samsung introduced the
Galaxy Tab and now, three
Notes later, it's ready to perfect the one-handed experience. With this new Note, the company's culled the best of what's around its Galaxy into an 8-inch form factor, housing a 1,280 x 800 TFT display, Exynos 4 Quad with 2GB RAM (clocked at 1.6GHz), TouchWiz-skinned Android Jelly Bean 4.1.2 OS, S Pen (and suite of associated apps), as well as radios for HSPA+ and WiFi into that familiar, lightweight plastic body.
But that extra inch alone isn't the
Galaxy Note 8.0's main attraction. Samsung's wisely made use of the additional screen real estate to bundle two extra features. Building upon market research that indicates over 80-percent of tablet use takes place within the living room, the company's partnered with Peel for its Smart Remote app, a visual programming guide with remote control functions baked-in that comes pre-loaded on the tab. And, in keeping with its portrait oriented design, the Note 8.0 also incorporates what the company calls "reading mode," effectively optimizing the slate's display for comfortable e-book use.
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Tablets,
Samsung
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Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0 official: 1.6GHz Exynos 4 Quad, 1280 x 800 display, HSPA+ 21, Android Jelly Bean 4.1.2
We knew another
Note was coming. After all,
Samsung Mobile head
JK Shin confirmed the news back in January. But here at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the tablet's finally been made official. If you haven't already inferred from its name, Samsung's latest S Pen entry boasts an 8-inch 1,280 x 800 TFT display. That puts it on par with the
Note 10.1's resolution, although here users will obviously benefit from a more eye-pleasing pixel density (189ppi) and smaller 210.8mm x 135.9mm x 7.95mm (8.3 x 5.4 x 0.31 inches) footprint. Beneath that
love it or hate it sealed plastic chassis, lies the company's
Exynos 4 Quad processor clocked at 1.6GHz and paired with 2GB RAM, radios for WiFi a/b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0, A-GPS, GLONASS and HSPA+ 21 (850/900/1900/2100MHz), up to 32GB of internal storage (microSD expansion available), in addition to a 4,600mAh battery. And, as with most Android products rolling out as of late, the Note 8.0 will ship with version 4.1.2 of Jelly Bean onboard -- skinned with the requisite TouchWiz UX.
Filed under:
Tablets,
Samsung
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Liveblogging MWC: here's when to catch the show's biggest launch events
Can't make it to Barcelona for this year's
Mobile World Congress? Don't worry -- we've got you covered. We'll be typing and snapping away quite a bit
over the next few days, beginning with Huawei's event tomorrow morning. Then, we'll be heading to Mozilla to learn more about
Firefox OS, and on Monday, we'll hear from Nokia, ASUS, and ZTE, just to name a few. We'll be checking out plenty of other events, too, along with countless booths at MWC's brand new venue, Fira Gran Via, located just outside the Barcelona city limits. We don't want you to miss any of the action -- jump past the break for a liveblog breakdown, along with links to each event.
Filed under:
Announcements,
Cellphones,
Tablets,
Mobile
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Insert Coin semifinalist: Radiator Labs wants to help you control your heat
Just about any apartment-dwelling urbanite can tell you that radiators are a bit of a necessary evil in the world of city living. What if there was a way to control the heat to individual rental units, without relying entirely on a landlord's temperature-controlling omnipotence? The Radiator Labs team has developed a device to help realize this dream. It's essentially housing that sits on-top of an individual radiator unit, controlling heat transfer to a room. Turn it off, and the insulation hampers the heat from making a room too hot. Turn it on, and the ducted fan spreads the heat out to the room.
Radiator Labs has a bit more info on its page, which you can check out in the source link below. You can also view graphical breakdown of the technology after the break.
Check out the full list of Insert Coin: New Challengers semifinalists here -- and don't forget to pick a winner!
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Source: Radiator Labs
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We're celebrating Insert Coin semifinalists with a giveaway makers will love
On Wednesday, we
opened voting so you can help us choose five finalists in our first
Insert Coin: New Challengers competition. It was hard enough for Engadget editors to decide on
10 semifinalists out of the myriad awesome crowdfunded projects entered, including such futuristic fare as
bipedal robots,
high-tech puppetry and more. Now it's your turn to pick which final five entrants will also present on stage at
Expand this March for the chance to win a total of $25,000: $5,000 for the Reader's Choice winner and a whopping $20,000 Grand Prize. Voting closes this coming Wednesday, February 27 at 12:30pm PST / 3:30pm EST, so
get your vote in!
To celebrate the DIY ingenuity and high tech innovation demonstrated by our intrepid entrants, we're running an Insert Coin Twitter Giveaway that gives a little something back to all the makers out there. We're giving away the following three kit prizes: Grand Prize is
the Egg-Bot, an art robot that draws intricate designs on eggs or other round objects including ornaments, golf balls, and light bulbs; 2nd Prize is an
Apple 1 Replica Kit designed with permission from the Apple I's original creator, Steve Wozniak; 3rd Prize is the
Adafruit FLORA GPS Starter Pack including a Flora motherboard, a GPS module that can also perform location datalogging, eight ultra-bright chainable RGB pixels and more.
To win, simply send a tweet naming which of the
10 semifinalists you want to win, in the following format: "I think [PROJECT NAME] should win $20,000 in the @EngadgetExpand Insert Coin Competition!" Of course while you're at it, don't forget to
vote! To be eligible to enter, you must be 18 years of age and a U.S. resident (please peruse the
full rules).
Name your inventor of choice by 5pm EST on Monday, February 25 (one entry per person, please!). We'll choose three winners at random to win each kit prize and will notify them via Twitter. Plus, make sure to follow
@EngadgetExpand for more chances to win tickets, prizes and other goodies.
Filed under:
Announcements,
Meta
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We're live from MWC 2013 in Barcelona!
We've arrived in Catalonia's capital city, where snow, apparently, has marked the start of this year's Mobile World Congress. That's right, the hills surrounding this typically warm Mediterranean metropolis have been blanketed in a thin layer of flurries, but we're nonetheless optimistic about this week's smartphone show in Barcelona. As
MWC 2013's massive new venue begins to take shape, we're preparing to deliver the hottest hands-ons, directly from Fira Gran Via. Some manufacturers, such as
HTC and
LG, have already demoed their latest handsets, and other devices have made
an early debut, but there's plenty of excitement still to come, as you'll discover in
our show preview. We'll be sharing our liveblog lineup in a few hours -- for now, it's time to bookmark
our event page, and check back often throughout the next week.
Filed under:
Announcements,
Cellphones,
Laptops,
Mobile
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ZTE Open, the company's first Firefox OS phone, gets a spec sheet at MWC
Remember that ZTE
teased the MWC debut of its upcoming
Firefox OS phone? Well, according to this spec sheet spotted by a tipster at ZTE's MWC booth, said device will be appropriately named ZTE Open, and it'll come with a moderate set of components: a Cortex-A5-based Qualcomm
MSM7225A (which is known to clock at either 600MHz or 800MHz), a 3.5-inch HVGA TFT display with capacitive touchscreen, 256MB DDR SDRAM, 512MB NAND storage and the usual set of radios like WiFi 802.11a/b/g/n, Bluetooth 2.1 (with EDR3), GPS and FM radio. Interestingly, there will be a 3.2-megapixel
front-facing camera,
but it appears that there'll be none on the back. The Open will be available in three SKUs with different UMTS bands: 850/1900, 850/2100 and 900/2100. As always, we'll be sharing the full announcement and hands-on once we see the phone at MWC, though we have a feeling that we've
already played with it before.
Update: As some of you have pointed out, yes, the "FF" may actually mean "fixed focus" instead of "front-facing," and the former seems more likely.
[Thanks, anonymous]
Filed under:
Cellphones,
Mobile
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Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0 spotted at MWC, almost hides your entire hand (updated with video)
At last, here's what we've been
promised: an 8-inch flavor of Samsung's
Galaxy Note lineup. Spotted by an anonymous tipster on the
MWC show floor earlier today, the booth shows off said tablet designed with portrait usage in mind, meaning it'll pretty much cover up most of whichever hand you'll be holding it with. And obviously, the Note 8.0 comes with a stylus as well. There's not much more to share at this point, but we'll be seeing this new device in its full glory very soon, so stay tuned. One more shot after the break.
Update: The folks over at
Beste Product caught a few models posing with the Galaxy Note 8.0 for Samsung's photographer. The Dutch website even has a video -- embedded after the break -- of the whole action, and there you can see some design similarities of the tablet's backside, especially how the camera protrudes a little.
[Thanks, anonymous]
Filed under:
Cellphones,
Tablets,
Mobile,
Samsung
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Insert Coin semifinalist: Observos serves up the internet of places
Internet of things? That's so 2012. 2013? Well maybe, just maybe, it'll be all about the internet of places. Hexagonal Research founders Loren Lang and Ronald Bynoe are betting that the next big thing will be environmentally aware computers. The pair have created Observos which combines an ATMEL microcontroller (with integrated wireless) with a host of on-board sensors. What began as a prototype built around a tower of Arduino shields is now a small first-run integrated board with spots for connecting XBee radio cards and a small LCD display. Right now the focus is on humidity, temperature and barometric pressure, though other environmental variables would be relatively trivial to tack on. While the Observos board is isn't quite ready for prime time, its already getting some serious field testing in a plant nursery and a potential partnership with the IEEE Humanitarian Technology Challenge could find the boards placed in health clinics in the Amazon.
In addition to the small display, the board can be programmed to send text message or email alerts, and in the future could tie into venting or heating systems for completely automated control. There's even a rudimentary web interface for monitoring the various data coming in from the sensors.
Check out the full list of Insert Coin: New Challengers semifinalists here -- and don't forget to pick a winner!
Filed under:
Misc
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Source: Observos
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Chromebook Pixel allows for custom bootloaders, is Linux-friendly
WiFi-only flavors of the
Chromebook Pixel have only just started shipping, but if you're already itching to install Linux on one of them, you're in luck. Not only have
kernel patches been submitted for the hardware, but Google's Bill Richardson has now laid out exactly how to load up the devices with
Linux Mint. Richardson says that part of the Chrome OS BIOS is read-only, so changes to it are generally exclusive to new hardware. Pixel, for example, has been tuned to support user-provided custom bootloaders thanks to an unverified BIOS slot. Unfortunately, Mint doesn't support the laptop's touchscreen and trackpad because it leverages the stock kernel. Adventurous types looking to boot a Tux-powered OS on a Pixel can hit the neighboring source link for step-by-step instructions.
Filed under:
Laptops,
Google
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Via: Android Central
Source: Bill Richardson (Google+)
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Sony NSZ-GS7 update brings Google TV's newer voice search and YouTube perks
Someone must have declared it Google TV Update Week without telling us: just days after a Vizio
Co-Star upgrade, Sony's
NSZ-GS7 Internet Player is getting its own tune-up. The Sony update parallels its Vizio counterpart in focusing mostly on the features from the
fall 2012 Google TV revamp, including PrimeTime and the updated YouTube app. Viewers pining for Amazon VOD access can also grab its app through Google Play. Sony mostly claims an edge over Vizio through its support for the equally new voice search feature: owners just have to chat with Sony's remote to get things done, instead of leaning on phone or tablet control. However GS7 owners plan to steer their TVs, they'll just need to check for a software update in the days ahead to rejuvenate their set-top boxes.
Filed under:
Home Entertainment,
HD,
Sony
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Source: Sony
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Wikipedia expects to offer SMS-based access within months
Wikipedia has long been pushing for access to its communal knowledge among those who can't afford the latest technology, going so far as to strike
deals with carriers to deliver free mobile web viewing. It's set to expand that reach to those for whom any advanced cellphone is out of the question. In part through the help of a
Knight News Challenge grant and South Africa's Praekelt Foundation, the non-profit's Wikipedia Zero effort will offer its content through SMS and
USSD messages in the next few months. Curious users will just have to send a text message to get an article in response, with no web required at all. It's a big step forward for democratizing online information for those who may not even have access to a smartphone, although we're curious as to how it will handle large articles; we can only imagine the volume of messages when trying to look up the
known universe.
Filed under:
Cellphones,
Internet,
Mobile
Comments
Via: The Verge
Source: Knight Foundation,
MediaWiki
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