Opera 10.6 hits Windows, Mac and Linux with faster Javascript, WebM video support
Four short months after Opera 10.5, the
Scandanavian potato boilers are back for more -- the latest version of their lightweight web browser features not only claims to be the fastest, but the first final browser with
WebM video support. While we actually noticed a variety of web videos felt choppy with the Windows version, there's no denying it's a speedy little hummingbird; Engadget felt snappier on Opera than Chrome or Firefox by far. Don't take our word for it, though -- try it out for yourself at the source link.
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Flash 10.1 ported to iPad, burninates the countryside (video)
Take it with a grain of salt, but it's looking like some prayers have been answered on this Fourth of July -- Flash (or is that "Frash"?) is running on this man's iPad, cleverly ported from Android. The YouTube video claims that by using a compatibility layer, the Android runtime can play Flash content natively in Safari, but only on iPad so far -- iPhone 3GS support is planned soon, as is iOS 4, and there's a call for developers to move the project forward at
GitHub. We've no way of determining its legitimacy at this moment, but it sure seems like
Comex (he of the
iPad "Spirit" jailbreak) has outdone himself this time, and hey,
where there's smoke, there's fire, right? See Strongbad answer emails on iOS, right after the break.
Update: It appears Comex has indeed been working on this project for some time; a second blurry video after the break (running on iPhone) shows us what it used to look like.
Continue reading Flash 10.1 ported to iPad, burninates the countryside (video)
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Pre Plus and Pixi Plus free on contract, with free accessories, too
What we really want from HP is a
brand new webOS smartphone, but it'd be unfair to say we'd "settle" for a
Palm Pre -- especially at prices like these. To commemorate the opening of the new HP Wireless store, the company's offering both Pre Plus and Pixi Plus, on AT&T or Verizon, free of charge for a limited time. Not only that, but these handsets feature free shipping, and the Pre comes with free accessories (including a Bluetooth headset, car charger and leather case) to boot. Meanwhile, Sprint's still sitting in the corner all alone, expecting folks to slap down cash money (up to $100) for these handsets' original incarnations. If you've been considering these devices already, it seems that now's the time to choose... but before you sign your life away, why not read
our full review?
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Prototype car with tactile feedback challenges the blind to drive (video)
We can already imagine just what you're thinking -- the blind have no place behind the wheel, right? As it turns out, though,
cars can steer themselves these days, so there technically no reason why (save a few laws) a computer-assisted blind person couldn't drive. Virginia Tech successfully tested a
laser-guided dirt buggy last year (see above), and teaming with the National Federation of the Blind this week, it intends to demonstrate a full-size augmented SUV next year. In January 2011, the Daytona racetrack will play host to a heavily customized Ford Escape, filled with "nonvisual interfaces" like a vibrating vest and gloves, a steering wheel that provides audio cues on when to turn, and a device called AirPix that fires blasts of compressed air at a driver's face. Even with all those gizmos, we understand if you still might not want your neighbors barreling down the street, but let's face it --
plenty of us sighted folks are
just as visually impaired. Video and full press release after the break.
Continue reading Prototype car with tactile feedback challenges the blind to drive (video)
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Scottevest's Carry-On Coat houses all of your portable electronics, stolen hotel shampoo bottles
Truth be told, it's been
awhile since we've seen a gadget-laced
jacket that really caught our eye. There's the occasional
winter coat with a built-in iPod slot, and there's a few
unaffordable threads that don't much matter to the vast majority of you, but it's difficult to think of a single overcoat that's as connected as this. Teased by Scottevest, the forthcoming Carry-On-Jacket is as functional as it is delightful, with an internal pocket made specifically for touchscreen devices so you'll never even have to reach inside to skip tracks. There's also an internal Personal Area Network (PAN), a dedicated BlackBerry (or any smartphone, really) holder, passport pouch, a digital camera compartment,
iPad pocket (er, "PadPocket") and a separate area made specifically for those zip-locked liquids that you'll need easy access to at the
TSA screening zone. Needless to say, the avid traveler with a pinch of geek lust should be grinning from ear-to-ear just gazing at this masterpiece, and honestly, we could see this converting even the hardest of hardcore Rollaboard warriors. Now all we need is a price and release date, STAT.
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DIY Lego foosball table advances to Nerd Cup semi-finals (video)
98diggsdigg Expert Lego builder Sariel managed to impress us a few months ago with his fully-articulated
robotic arm, and he's now back with a particularly
well-timed project: a foosball table built entirely out of Lego. While it's not fully automated (and therefore ineligible for the
Robo Cup), it does use some WeDo motion sensors to automatically keep track of the score and announce goals on a laptop connected to the table (not to mention on some sliding Lego bricks above each goal), and it even packs a built-in ball return mechanism to help speed up play. Head on past the break to check it out in action.
Continue reading DIY Lego foosball table advances to Nerd Cup semi-finals (video)
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HannStar Display shells out $30m to settle LCD price fixing case
Another day, another company pleading guilty to their role in a
massive global price-fixing
conspiracy surrounding the MSRP of LCDs. The Taiwan-based HannStar Display agreed (grudgingly, we surmise) this week to cough up a whopping $30 million for its role in the scheme, marking the seventh company to "
plead or agree to plead guilty as a result of the department's
investigation into the LCD industry." All told, the US Department of Justice has seen some
$890 million paid out and 17 executives charged, with HannStar in particular being pegged for violating the Sherman Act during its participation in the conspiracy from September 2001 to January 2006. So, anyone up for being lucky number eight?
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Mystery Nokia slider shows off proto-Symbian^3 one last time, commits cellular suicide (video)
We never did quite get the name of
Nokia's prototype slider -- it certainly isn't
the C7, and it's
apparently not the N9 -- but regardless of what you call our dearly departed, its journey is over
. In what will no doubt be a fairly familiar tale to readers everywhere,
TechnoBuffalo saw the phone remotely wiped right before their eyes, and
Negri Electronics (
our original source) says they've got private investigators breathing down their necks for the device. Stalwart to the bitter end, RM-626 gave one last performance before it dropped. See the 4-inch handset play an embedded YouTube video after the break if you must, but be sure to stop at the 5:45 mark. For true phone lovers, the rest is too painful to watch.
[Thanks, Larry N.]
Continue reading Mystery Nokia slider shows off proto-Symbian^3 one last time, commits cellular suicide (video)
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Blockbuster avoids bankruptcy for now, but not NYSE delisting
Things stateside haven't gone
the way of Blockbuster Portugal (yet) but while the Blockbuster was able to make arrangements with creditors and avoid bankruptcy this week, it will be forced to delist from the New York Stock Exchange after a proposed reverse stock split fell through. Even the extension on debt payments it was able to negotiate hasn't satisfied analysts, with our old friend
Michael Pachter telling Reuters "there's nothing on the horizon that makes it look like Blockbuster is going to be more profitable." Ouch. A substantial amount of debt has long been a problem for Blockbuster as it tries to
adjust to a changing marketplace with Redbox and Netflix, and with shares trading at .18, has now made its existence more precarious than
ever.
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NASA successfully tests autonomous lunar lander navigation system, codename GENIE (video)
Robonaut2 may have
fantastic biceps, but raw muscle won't put a
man humanoid on the moon -- that takes rockets. Rockets like the one in this RR-1 prototype lander, recently outfitted with a Guidance Embedded Navigator Integration Environment (GENIE) system to let the craft safely descend to the lunar surface. On June 23rd, NASA and partner
Armadillo Aerospace put the system to the test, hoping it could figure out the complex algorithms necessary to process volumes of data from the laser altimeter, GPS and inertial sensors, and quickly enough to steer the rocket engine accordingly... but the machine performed like a charm. See its first solo flight in an inspiring, flame-filled video after the break, and skip to 4:12 for the good stuff.
Continue reading NASA successfully tests autonomous lunar lander navigation system, codename GENIE (video)
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Nexus One sees red, nearly doubles battery life? (video)
These five
Nexus One smartphones may seem to have defects, but there's actually nothing wrong with their
AMOLED screens -- the funky colors are an attempt to improve battery life by turning off unnecessary sub-pixel LEDs. Hooking up his handset to an industrial power meter, Android engineer Jeff Sharkey discovered a blood-red screen drew 42 percent less current than full color -- the least of any combination by far -- purportedly doubling the effective battery life of the phone. While you're probably not going to be able to test the requisite software patch for yourself unless you're mildly familiar with Google code, you'll find a video of the crimson wonder after the break to fuel your dreams of a eyestrain-free astronomy cheat sheet... and Android bullfighting, of course.
Continue reading Nexus One sees red, nearly doubles battery life? (video)
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Steve Jobs emails 'are real' claims Boy Genius Report, says Apple PR lied to press
Earlier this week
we reported on a story that had been doing the rounds -- another Steve Jobs email thread with an irate customer. Like many other stories about Jobs' emails to customers, this yarn centered around a user disappointed with his iPhone 4's service, and Steve's flippant responses. The first time we saw the story crop up, we were suspicious of its validity (and frankly, newsworthiness), and we became even more suspicious after
AppleInsider ran an article claiming that the source of the supposed emails had been shopping the tale for cash (Engadget was not contacted by the source). We did eventually cover the story, but only after Apple itself responded to the tale, claiming -- first to
Fortune and then to us -- that the emails were false, and the exchange had not happened. That struck us as particularly newsworthy, because in all our years of reporting on Steve Jobs'
wild personal emails (of which there are
many,
many examples), we'd never heard Apple refute that the emails were coming from him.
Now,
Boy Genius Report (where the original story appeared) has fired back, emphatically claiming that the emails are real, and that the proof is in the original message headers which the site has been given access to by the source.
BGR goes one step further as well, and essentially accuses Apple PR of spinning this story to news outlets to suit its needs. And let's not mince words -- the claim is that Apple PR is lying to the press. The proof which
BGR offers is no more or less convincing to us than the site's previous post on the subject; email headers and timestamps can be faked. Still, it is notable that Boy Genius is pushing back on this story, and we certainly don't believe the blog would knowingly publish a false email thread. As
TechCrunch points out in its take on the matter, PR reps often give vague, sugarcoated, or misleading information to news sites, but there has never been a time when Apple's PR has outright lied to major publications (that we know of). That would be a mess of epic proportions, and we can't really fathom why they would go to the trouble. The company has obviously let stuff like this slide for years -- this seems like an odd time (and a relatively minor story) to get up in arms about it. We've reached out to Apple for further statement on this, and will report back as soon as we hear something. In the meantime, take a look at the source link and see what
BGR has to say on the matter.
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iBuyPower's Magic makes any game playable through multitouch (video)
So, you just sprung for a multitouch-enabled
Battalion CZ-11, eh? Too bad there's hardly any software out there for you to take advantage of. Er,
was out there.
iBuyPower -- a company most often associated with new hardware -- has just flexed its software muscle by creating a new system that will enable any game to played via multitouch, regardless of whether the game's creators gave it so much as a thought. Magic, which is short for Multitouch Advanced Gaming Interface and Control, is a proprietary piece of code designed specifically for the company's own touch-enabled laptops, and it works by linking a multitouch gesture to a command the game already understands, emulating multitouch commands by mapping keystrokes or mouse clicks. Best of all, it's available now as a gratis download, and we have little doubt that the hackers in attendance will have this working on Dells, Alienwares, Lenovos and HPs before you can spin around twice and add another smudge mark to your LCD.
Continue reading iBuyPower's Magic makes any game playable through multitouch (video)
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HTC HD2 Android and Ubuntu builds now available for mass consumption
We're approaching the end of an era -- the legacy of
Windows Mobile handsets getting spotted running some open sourced OS or another shortly after their release. With
Windows Phone 7 on the horizon the
HD2 will surely be one of the last, but you can extend that grand tradition just a bit longer by installing your choice of Ubuntu Karmic Koala or Android 2.1. Those builds we
reported on earlier have been made available for general consumption and, while installing them certainly doesn't seem to be
entirely risk free, neither of them touch the phone's internal flash, so you're never more than a reset away from the comforts of WinMo. If you're feeling adventurous this weekend, both downloads are on the other end of the source link below.
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Firefox 1.1 hits Maemo in final form, featuring Add-ons, Save to PDF and more
Two months after
an impressive beta, Mozilla's finalized its first full mobile browser for Maemo -- beating
iPhone,
Android and most assuredly
Windows Mobile versions to the punch. Though it doesn't seem to have gained any new features in the interim, what it does bring to the table is sweet indeed: portrait browsing, auto-updating add-ons and the ability to magically convert webpages to PDF right on your phone. If you have a Nokia N900 or N810, do your device a favor and download it right now; if not, you'll find a handy guide to your burning jealousy at our more coverage link.
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Penguin United's Eagle Eye brings WASD to your PS3 shooters, disrespect to your enemies (video)
With the PS3's plethora of USB ports scattered across the front, you'd think it'd be a no-brainer that all shooters on the console would support keyboard and mouse controls to make the FPS purists happy. Sadly that's not nearly the case, so it's up to companies like Penguin United (creators of a fine array of silly
Wii peripherals) to fill the void. The Eagle Eye is its attempt, a surprisingly sizable box with an unfortunately short 2-foot USB cable and inputs for mouse and keyboard. Using buttons on that box you assign controller inputs to keys and away you go, hunting the Helgath's worst in WASD. The cost is a bit steep at $60 when it ships later this month, but nobody said having a (possibly imaginary) unfair advantage over the competition would be cheap.
Continue reading Penguin United's Eagle Eye brings WASD to your PS3 shooters, disrespect to your enemies (video)
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EyePhone reference mysteriously disappears from online clips of Futurama
Remember how awesome and
clever Futurama was the other night? Well, if you missed it, your chances to see it in its original form might be slowly dwindling. It seems that Comedy Central has wiped out the reference in the dialogue to the "EyePhone 2.0." So, while we don't have any conspiracy theories brewing about what happened, it's a pretty odd thing to scrub, and we figure there are two possibilities: either Comedy Central is trying to cover their
on this one, or they got a late night email from... someone. Thankfully, nothing disappears on the internet, so you can check out both clips and see for yourself after the break.
[Thanks, Henry L.]Continue reading EyePhone reference mysteriously disappears from online clips of Futurama
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