Thursday, July 30, 2009

Video: Creative Zii EGG 3D gaming demo

Video: Creative Zii EGG 3D gaming demo

Now that the gang at Creative have 'fessed up to the Zii EGG first seen at the FCC earlier this month, we imagine we'll be encountering this bad boy quite often over the coming months. If you need your StemCell Computing fix right now, we have a video that showcases the newest developer platform running a racing game in all of its accelerometer-packing, 3D OpenGL ES-enhanced glory. Peep for yourself after the break.

[Via EpiZENter, thanks Michael]

Continue reading Video: Creative Zii EGG 3D gaming demo

Filed under: Gaming, Handhelds, Portable Audio, Portable Video

Video: Creative Zii EGG 3D gaming demo originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 29 Jul 2009 15:03:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Kodak's 1080p Zi8 HD pocket camcorder in hand

Kodak's 1080p Zi8 HD pocket camcorder in hand

Yeah, you don't really need 1080p in a compact like this. You know it, we know it. Kodak probably knows it too. Still, it's always pretty wild to pick up a little piece like this and know it can shoot to a native resolution that our parents can't even pronounce. The new Zi8 is certainly bulky for a "pocket" camcorder, but makes up for it by sporting a rechargeable battery, line-in audio jack, HDMI out, 2.5-inch LCD and even keeping the pop-out USB plug around for old times sake. The perks of face recognition for improved exposure and gyroscope-based image stabilization are also pretty snazzy at this $180 pricepoint. We still aren't quite sold on the way this camera (like most of these compacts) processes video -- it seems to do a lot of damage to frame-to-frame motion, something that Apple fought off pretty well with the iPhone 3GS -- but we're going to take one home and test it out a little before we throw down a verdict.

Gallery: Kodak's 1080p Zi8 HD pocket camcorder in hand

Filed under: Digital Cameras, HDTV, Portable Video

Kodak's 1080p Zi8 HD pocket camcorder in hand originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 29 Jul 2009 15:24:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Sonic upgrading CinemaNow movie streaming to 1080p

Sonic upgrading CinemaNow movie streaming to 1080p

VUDU and Xbox Live, welcome your new competition in the 1080p movie streaming arena, now that Sonic Solutions has announced its CinemaNow service will offer "Blu-ray Disc resolution" (3D is already on the way) with buffer-free playback thanks to its new Cinevision Adaptive HD encoding and delivery system. Sonic claims to have a leg up since the system is already used for Blu-ray disc production, and it's teaming with Widevine for the adaptive streaming backend. As usual, even if you're not directly a CinemaNow user, its wide compatibility and position behind Blockbuster's store and upcoming ones from Best Buy and Zip.ca should mean 1080p streaming to an ethernet equipped home theater device will be available no matter where you are, whether you're ready to ditch the discs (and downloads) or not.

Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment

Sonic upgrading CinemaNow movie streaming to 1080p originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 29 Jul 2009 15:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read&nbs! p;| ;Permalink | Email this | Comments

T-Mobile myTouch 3G preorders now shipping, arriving, being touched

T-Mobile myTouch 3G preorders now shipping, arriving, being touched

If you've preordered one o' them fancy new myTouch 3Gs, check your mailbox, front porch, back door, administrative assistant, or dirty, thieving neighbor -- because it might be there. T-Mobile said that preorders would be shipping at the tail end of July, and sure enough, some folks are starting to get lucky; plebes without preorders will still need to wait until August 5, though, so, you know, either sit there and drool or shout nasty remarks about how you'd rather have a Hero in the meanwhile.

[Thanks, sun]

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

T-Mobile myTouch 3G preorders now shipping, arriving, being touched originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 29 Jul 2009 16:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Unofficial Google Voice client for Palm Pre makes the scene

Unofficial Google Voice client for Palm Pre makes the scene

Google Voice might have just been unceremoniously thrown out of the iPhone App Store, but that doesn't mean development isn't racing forward on other platforms -- say hello to dkGoogleVoice, an unofficial client for the Palm Pre. Yeah, it's buggy and has a bare-bones feature set, but hey -- it exists, and it's only going to get better. Can't say that about your little phone, can you Steve?

[Via PreCentral]

Filed under: Cellphones

Unofficial Google Voice client for Palm Pre makes the scene originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 29 Jul 2009 17:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

New Atom architecture Pine Trail on schedule for this year, says Intel's Eden

New Atom architecture Pine Trail on schedule for this year, says Intel's Eden

The ever-entertaining Mooley Eden, Intel's General Manager of Mobile Platform Group, wants you to know as succinctly as possible that the rumors of Atom evolution Pine Trail's delay have been greatly exaggerated. "Pine Trail is on schedule. You can quote me on that... The three chip solution down to two chip solution [is] coming this year." Now how about a hint as to where we'll first see this chip, eh Eden?

Filed under: Laptops

New Atom architecture Pine Trail on schedule for this year, says Intel's Eden originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 29 Jul 2009 17:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

WowWee Cinemin Swivel available for pre-order in U.S. and Europe

WowWee Cinemin Swivel available for pre-order in U.S. and Europe

Pico projector fans, the wait is over. WowWee -- the company with the wackiest name in the business (or at least the most fun to type) has just announced that the Cinemin Swivel is available for pre-order today -- as in right now -- both Stateside and in Europe. The press for this device sounds a little like wishful thinking (enjoy romantic flicks on the bedroom ceiling! foreign cinema in the backyard! YouTube on a subway wall! psychedelic graphics on the dance floor!) but if you've been in the market for a pocket-sized, iPhone-friendly multimedia projector, your choices just expanded by one. Yours for a song -- and $349.99. Gallery below.

Gallery: WowWee Cinemin Swivel available for pre-order in U.S. and Europe

Filed under: Displays

WowWee Cinemin Swivel available for pre-order in U.S. and Europe originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 29 Jul 2009 18:44:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Sony brings over a million Google Books to the Reader

Sony brings over a million Google Books to the Reader

Cool move by Sony to bolster the number of titles in its Reader ebook store -- it's linked up with Google to provide over a million free public domain works from Google Books, just like those fun folks at Barnes and Noble. The books are in the EPUB format and will work with the PRS-505 or the PRS-700 in the US only for now -- different countries have different copyright terms, so we'd imagine the lawyers are busy sorting it all out. Sure, none of this will do much to shake the Kindle's market- and mindshare, but at least Sony won't be deleting this stuff off your device without your permission, right?

[Thanks, Tom]

Filed under: Handhelds

Sony brings over a million Google Books to the Reader originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 29 Jul 2009 21:46:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

LG releases first official shots of BL40 "New Chocolate"

LG releases first official shots of BL40 "New Chocolate"

We've already got a pile of evidence taller than the BL40 itself that told us LG's latest Black Label device was that ultra-wide, glossy red and black slate we've seen floating around -- but now, for the very first time, it's totally official. The company has just released the first fully-revealed press photos of the phone that it's calling the "New Chocolate," an homage to one of the phones that brought it to the dominant industry position it enjoys today. So, is the BL40 going to help it continue that dominance? At a glance here, yeah, we'd say there's a pretty good chance.

Filed under: Cellphones

LG releases first official shots of BL40 "New Chocolate" originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 29 Jul 2009 22:53:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

How to SMS with Google Voice from Any Mobile Phone

Source: http://lifehacker.com/5316921/how-to-sms-with-google-voice-from-any-mobile-phone

By Gina Trapani, 2:00 PM on Fri Jul 17 2009, 29,586 views

Just because you don't have an Android phone or BlackBerry (or even, unofficially, an iPhone) doesn't mean you can't text from your cellphone using your Google Voicenumber. In fact, you can use Google Voice SMS capabilities on any phone.

Even if you do have an Android phone, BlackBerry, or iPhone, you can still use this method to use the native SMS app on it. It's an inconvenient kluge, but it works.

First, log into Google Voice and configure it to forward text messages to your cell phone. When someone sends a text message to your Google Voice number, you'll receive the text on your phone–but not from the recipient's phone number. Instead, it will be a 406 number you've never seen before, with the person's name preceding the message (as pictured here). Add that number to your recipient's address book entry as "Other" or a custom label (like "GV SMS"). Each one of your text recipients will have a different 406 number.

From there on in, if you SMS that 406 number, your recipient will receive text messages from you—and it will look like they're coming from your Google Voice number. Their replies to any messages you send to that number will go back to your Google Voice number and come to you via the 406–meaning, your recipient never sees the 406 number. Like I said, it's a kluge, but it works.

We already mentioned this tip in our guide to easing your transition to Google Voice, but it's an important feature worth repeating.

Smarterware is Lifehacker editor emeritus Gina Trapani's new home away from 'hacker. To get all of the latest from Smarterware, be sure to subscribe to the Smarterware RSS feed. For more, check out Gina's weekly Smarterware feature here on Lifehacker.

accurate, descriptive page titles are in; creative, clever headlines are not-so-much -- http://bit.ly/nax2 -- well researched via @glenngabe

Media used to be finite; social "media" (converstions) can be infinite. In fact, this "media" does not even pre-exist - http://bit.ly/11Davq

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Microsoft Page Hunt Game to Improve Search?

Microsoft Page Hunt Game to Improve Search?

Microsoft just launched Page Hunt, a game that presents web pages to players and asks that they guess key words to hunt them down. In the past, RWW has covered a number of search relevancy projects that incorporate human computational power including Semanti. But few projects have been presented to volunteers in such a fun and easy way.

Sponsor

Once a game begins, players are presented with a web page and receive points to guess keywords for the pages in the top 5 results. Unveiled by Microsoft's Chris Quirk and Raman Chandrasekar at the Association for Computing Machinery's Special Interest Group on Informational Retrieval (SIGIR) Conference, the game is aimed at improving search algorithms and ranking.

MIT's Technology Review compares PageHunt to Luis von Ahn's spam-fighting puzzles and image tagging games. Nevertheless, for initial volunteer buy-in, it may actually have closer ties to Wikipedia. While the projects seem very different, they actually share similar missions. Wikipedia is aimed at collecting and distributing educational content to global audiences. Meanwhile, Microsoft's Page Hunt aims to increase the relevancy and speed at which information can be found.

Very few projects offer the general public a chance to volunteer in improving the sum of human knowledge in such a significant way. Wikipedia volunteers are often fiercely devoted to curating their pages knowing that even the US Health Department is factoring the community into their outreach strategy. Page Hunt's search relevancy game players may adopt a similar mentality.

One key barrier to this sort of adoption is the fact that Page Hunt's info will not likely be shared with non-Microsoft search players. Meanwhile Wikipedia content is shared freely as public domain information. It will be interesting to see if the Page Hunt community fleshes out in the same manner or if a less-proprietary search game will spring up in its place.

Discuss

Create an iPhone Document Scanner from Cardboard [Scanner Hacks]

Create an iPhone Document Scanner from Cardboard [Scanner Hacks]

You might need a scanner every so often, but they're far too big for their occasional usefulness. If you've got an iPhone and some time to cut cardboard, you can ditch some paper and capture documents without the glass bed.

University of Cincinnati student Kyle A Koch frequently synced his iPhone and backed up his iPhoto library, but wasn't so hot with the paper and study material organization. Since he knew he was reliable with iPhone images, he put his industrial design studies into practice and crafted cardboard-based docks that elevate the phone just enough to properly frame and capture 8.5x11 documents.

You can order a customized, pre-assembled version of Koch's scanner apparatus in cardboard or medium density fibreboard, but Koch also includes a free EPS file for downloading and DIY building. It builds roughly 15 inches tall and long, and would seem to be pretty cheap to build. Combined with a universal capture/OCR tool like Evernote and the powerful camera on an iPhone 3G S, it's definitely a work-able scanner solution for those who only need a few documents in digital form now and again.

iPhone Document Scanner
Ponoko showroom - iPhone Document Scanner [Kyle A Koch via Twitter / Kevin Lim]

Google Voice for Android Adds Notification and Call Options [Downloads]

Google Voice for Android Adds Notification and Call Options [Downloads]

Android: An official Google Voice app update plugs two niggling holes in its settings and options, allowing users to determine how and when their phones alert to new messages, and whether Google Voice or the phone hardware makes their calls.

The first release of Google Voice for Android offered Voice users an all-or-nothing proposition. Either you wanted to use Google Voice for every U.S. call, only for international calls, or not at all. The latest version available in the Android Market, 0.1.415, adds another option to ask you before placing each call whether to call on your standard carrier number or through Google Voice. It would be great to see a toggle setting for each contact—the boss gets your Google Voice number, friends on the same network get their free minutes—but it's a helpful step.

The other settings tweak deals with your voicemail/SMS notifications. You can set a specific ringtone/bleep for them, and/or have your phone vibrate and use its LCD light. Not a big sexy update, but it's something Voice users encounter every day.

An updated Google Voice app can be downloaded free from the Android Market, or found at AndroLib. Thanks Gordon!

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)