Monday, January 25, 2010

Tablet Sutra: How Are We Supposed to Hold This Thing? [Apple Tablet]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/9r4lm4dFhvQ/tablet-sutra-how-are-we-supposed-to-hold-this-thing

Speculation and guesswork aside, if Apple's got a tablet, we need to know how to handle it, physically. So, with two pieces of cardboard, scotch tape and Photoshop, we crudely mocked one up. It was... unusual.

Tablet PCs have been around for years, but they've got keyboard, ball-jointed necks and all manner of extraneous fixture and features. Smartphones are sort of like this new slate-like variety of tablet, only they're too tiny. Buttonless, slick, slab-like tablets do currently exist, but they're rare, and no one has found the right software pairing to make them particularly versatile. A 10-to-11-inch tablet wouldn't be totally new, but since none of us are really clear on how you're supposed to handle it in real-world situations, we built our own.

Here now, in the darkest, dingiest corner of the tech world's favorite rabbit hole, we've performed a hands-on with our cardboard version of Steve Jobs' mythical product. So, before it exists anywhere outside of our collective imagination, step into Tablet Sutra, the at-times-awkward position-by-position walkthrough of tablet handling:

The hurdles for a tablet like this aren't just technological. This is a device that's going to have to convert its usership to a whole new kind of physical experience. We're used to laptops and smartphones, and we take the things they're good and bad at for granted. The tablet's software may be a wonderful mystery box with massive potential, but the tablet form factor, like any other, won't be for everyone.

If you think we left out any key tablet positions, mention it in comments—feel free to upload photos—or send a note to our tips line with "Tablet Sutra" in the subject line. We'll be on the lookout.



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South Korea Plans Giant Eco Dome [Architecture]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/GIheUN_04AM/south-korea-plans-giant-eco-dome

The Ecorium Project, South Korea's planned nature reserve, is a stunner. The 33,000 sq. meter park includes a wetland reserve, a wild plant area, and maybe—just maybe—two dudes and their hilarious hijinks.

The structure will comprise a series of connected domes, each of which contains its own greenhouse.

Sponsored by the National Ecological Institute of South Korea and designed by Samoo, the Ecorium Project is going to be as much an educational center as it is a preserve. It'll also be energy-efficient itself, with each greenhouse being capable of detecting external climate conditions and making the appropriate adjustments inside. The exterior will be made of metal panels, low-iron and low-e double glazing, wood and plexiglass.

While there's no word on when it will be completed—or started, for that matter—it's great to see a project like this moving past the concept phase and into development. [World Architecture News via Inhabitat]



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Dell Mini 10 with Broadcom Crystal HD Accelerator review

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/25/dell-mini-10-with-broadcom-crystal-hd-accelerator-review/

Michael Dell may not be a fan of netbooks, but you wouldn't know that from the newest Mini 10. Joining the current Mini 10v, Dell's completely overhauled the chassis and added Intel's new Pine Trail processor. But that's not all: come February the little laptop will be available with Broadcom's Crystal HD accelerator, which promises full HD playback on a high-res 1366 x 768 display. But does the $425 package rid us of our tireless complaints that Atom can't handle HD, and does it rival netbooks based on NVIDIA's Ion platform? And perhaps more importantly, can we count on the Mini 10 to be a valuable member of the growing Pine Trail netbook fraternity when it comes to battery life and ergonomics? Read on to find out!

Continue reading Dell Mini 10 with Broadcom Crystal HD Accelerator review

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Dell Mini 10 with Broadcom Crystal HD Accelerator review originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 25 Jan 2010 11:05:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A La Carte Pie in a Jar Is Brilliant, Looks Delicious [Cooking]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/c-dJhqbLmT0/a-la-carte-pie-in-a-jar-is-brilliant-looks-delicious

There's nothing like a great slice of pie, but unless you're going to a party or pot luck, an entire pie spells danger for your waistline. The solution: a single-serving pie-in-a-jar.

Cooking weblog Our Best Bites shares their brilliant brainchild, the single-serving pie-in-a-jar. Making them isn't all that different from making a regular pie—you'll make some dough, some filling, and bake them—but they're small, freezable, and easy to cook up at any time once you've put in the legwork of making them.

Hit up the post for the full, delicious details.




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OpenShot 1.0 Is an Actually Usable Linux Video Editor [Downloads]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/MYUC_9v9nNk/openshot-10-is-an-actually-usable-linux-video-editor

Linux/Live CD/DVD: It's one of the five features we desperately want in Ubuntu: a video editor that the average user can stitch together simple movies with. OpenShot 1.0 is mostly there.

That's not to say the interface has much polish, or that you don't have to install non-free multimedia codecs in your Linux system beforehand. Then again, unless you're a FLAC/OGG music purist, you probably already installed your MP3 and other file supports.

I had a video project to assemble over the weekend—combining a recorded audio file and still pictures into a video file that could be imported into iMovie, or watched on a standard PC laptop. I dropped an audio file into the left-hand sidebar, and it automatically dropped into one of the two default tracks. I dragged in a batch of pictures, and I could then drop them onto the timeline. From there, you can use the really simple tools—resize, razor, marker, and moving tool—to adjust and arrange the clips. For my purposes, that was perfect. It was a return to earlier versions of iMovie, a basic non-linear video editor for the rest of us.

If you're looking to make very complex transitions or pull precise transformations on your video, you're still better off with a more advanced suite on another platform—one of our six best video editing applications, perhaps. If you're a Linux user and looking to stitch together a small-scale video project, OpenShot is definitely worth a look.

OpenShot is a free download, available as a live CD or DVD, as an Ubuntu/Debian repository, and pre-compiled for Ubuntu and Fedora systems. If you've given OpenShot a try and like it, or find it lacking a certain something, tell us about it in the comments.

OpenShot 1.0 Has Arrived! [OpenShot Video Editor]



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Chrome's Google Voice Extension Lets You Click To Call [Google Voice]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/c3NJsA8GONI/chromes-google-voice-extension-lets-you-click-to-call

Yesterday Google updated their Google Voice extension for Chrome, allowing Voice-heads to call numbers directly from their browsers. If you love Google or hate retyping phone numbers, this one's for you.

One of the great things about upgrading to a smartphone years ago was that all numbers were links. The updated Voice extension for Chrome allows for a similar streamlining in your browser.

The extension basically just turns phone numbers into clickable links, eliminating the need to cut and paste them across windows. It also adds a phone icon to Chrome, letting you quickly place calls and choose the number from which you do so. While it's a nice step towards a lazier future, there are some caveats. Mac users, for example, will need to install the latest Chromium build, not just the regular old Chrome, to gain the functionality.

Some people might find this capability insignificant, but anything that makes it easier to order food from places I find on Yelp is worthwhile in my book. [Google via TechCrunch]



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World's First 3D Photocopier Goes On Sale For $17,000 [3D]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/uqXg1vyp4Dw/worlds-first-3d-photocopier-goes-on-sale-for-17000

Ortery's Photosimile 5000 3D photocopier has taken two years to go on sale since it first surfaced in 2008, providing digital 3D replicas of whatever object you place inside it. Think of the possibilities!

Once the object is placed on the Ortery turntable inside the box, a Canon DSLR takes 360 degree photos, with the four daylight bulbs giving 6500K of illumination—the perfect lighting conditions for the 72 photos taken.

Connected to a PC by USB, the images are saved as GIF or Flash files, and then transferred to the Photosimile software. If all of this is getting you hot under the collar at the thought of such a machine, better schedule a meeting in with your bank manager—it's $17,000 and has just started shipping. [Ortery via Gizmag via TechRadar]



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Super Talent adds SandForce controller to new TeraDrive SSDs

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/23/super-talent-adds-sandforce-controller-to-new-teradrive-ssds/

All we ever hear of that SandForce SF-1500 controller seems to be about how wickedly fast it is, so we'd be remiss not to inform you that it's found another home -- this time inside Super Talent's new enterprise-class SSD line. Branded as TeraDrive FT2, these drives will range from 50GB to 400GB on MLC NAND flash, or up to 200GB on the even nicer SLC-based stuff. The only hurdle in all this glory is that the hardware seems destined primarily for non-consumer markets, with OEMs getting samples now and expecting volume deliveries by the end of this quarter. Then again, if you really can't wait for these to filter through in consumer machines, we're sure OCZ and RunCore will be more than happy to sell you some of their own silly fast SandForce-infused gear.

Super Talent adds SandForce controller to new TeraDrive SSDs originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 23 Jan 2010 13:48:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Android dual-boot could make Nokia N900 jack of two trades

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/23/android-dual-boot-could-make-nokia-n900-jack-of-two-trades/

Maemo's already pretty open as open platforms go, but what's better than a single open platform on your open phone? Two open platforms, of course, creating a vortex of pure, unadulterated openness the likes of which the world has never seen. Hacking is par for the course with Nokia's N900, so it comes as no surprise to see that a motivated individual has managed to get his unit set up in a trick dual-boot configuration with Maemo on internal storage and Android on a separate partition loaded from the microSD card. He says it's "proof of concept" for the moment -- but to steal his words, "its [sic] real and it could be spectacular." We couldn't agree more, and as much as Nokia loves its own code, we can't help but think this precisely the sort of tinkering the N900 was made for. Check video of the magical boot after the break.

Continue reading Android dual-boot could make Nokia N900 jack of two trades

Android dual-boot could make Nokia N900 jack of two trades originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 23 Jan 2010 18:34:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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MSI X-Slim X620 keeps its ULV processor and ATI graphics, adds an optical drive

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/23/msi-x-slim-x620-keeps-its-ulv-processor-and-ati-graphics-adds-a/

Just a few days after revealing its X-Slim X420, MSI is back at it again with another Intel ULV-powered laptop -- but this time the redesigned 15.6-inch version of its X series has made room for an optical drive. As one might expect the 1.4-inch thick / 5-pound lappie is a bit heftier than before, though oddly it has the same selection of ports, including HDMI, two USBs, e-SATA, an SD card reader, along with a mic and headphone jacks. Other than that the Windows 7 Home Premium portable packs an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5430 GPU, and will support up to 4GB of RAM and 500GB of storage. No details on pricing or availability, but we'll be keeping our ears to the ground.

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MSI X-Slim X620 keeps its ULV processor and ATI graphics, adds an optical drive originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 23 Jan 2010 20:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sungworld's Android MID fights the future

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/24/keepin-it-real-fake-part-cclii-sungworlds-android-mid-fights/

We don't think we're over-reaching when we say that this device, Sungworld's just-unveiled 7-inch, Android touchscreen MID looks a bit... well, Apple-ish, and we hear that the UI (which we haven't yet seen in action) will take cues from the company as well. Regardless, this thickish-looking puppy will boast an ARM926 CPU, 128MB of memory, 2GB of storage, and two USB ports. It's also supposedly going to be available in pink, blue, green, purple and black, and though we don't know pricing yet, we assume that if that tablet we've heard so much about in recent weeks fails to materialize next Wednesday, well... okay, this won't be a great stand-in. Sorry.

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Sungworld's Android MID fights the future originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 24 Jan 2010 00:47:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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HTC HD2 gets a spec boost for the US

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/24/htc-hd2-gets-a-spec-boost-for-the-us/

Looks like the HTC HD2 is getting a little spec bump on its way to our fair shores: the official spec page lists the version bound for T-Mobile US with 1GB of ROM and 576 of RAM, a boost over the international edition's 512 and 448MB. What's more, it looks like a bigger 16GB microSD card will come in the box, a big jump over the 2GB stick currently bundled overseas. Not a bad little upgrade -- dare we hope that it presages a much bigger bump to Windows Mobile 7 before the scheduled spring launch?

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

HTC HD2 gets a spec boost for the US originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 24 Jan 2010 14:23:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple tablet maybe starts showing up in app-tracking stats, kinda

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/24/apple-tablet-starts-showing-up-in-app-tracking-stats-kinda/

It's sort of funny that this is the hardest evidence we have of an Apple tablet, but here we go: mobile app analytics company Flurry is saying that it's detected around 50 devices on Apple's Cupertino campus that have the "characteristics" of a tablet, running a new version of the iPhone OS numbered 3.2. How? Around 200 different apps with Flurry's tracking code were downloaded and used on these mystery devices -- mostly games, followed by entertainment and media apps -- and Flurry first noticed this new device in October, with numbers picking up in January. Unfortunately, Flurry hasn't said what these mysterious tablet characteristics are, so we don't have much to go on -- and without specifics like a bigger screen size or a faster processor we're skeptical. For all we know, this is just a new iPhone running a slightly tweaked build of OS 3.0 that supports a higher-resolution screen or something -- especially looking at that 3.2 version number, when everything else we've heard suggests the tablet will jump to 4.0.

What's more, 200 apps in the grand scheme of things really isn't that many -- Flurry only tracks small percentage of the 100,000 apps in the App Store. We're not exactly willing to accept any detailed analysis based on a dataset that narrow, so let's just say that it's very likely that Apple's testing new devices running a new version of the iPhone OS and leave it at that until Wednesday, shall we?

Apple tablet maybe starts showing up in app-tracking stats, kinda originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 24 Jan 2010 23:43:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Is this the Motorola MOTOSPLIT?

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/25/is-this-the-motorola-motosplit/

Okay, we're not anywhere close to 100 percent on this, but we just got a blurry screenshot of something we're told is the Motorola MOTOSPLIT, a Snapdragon-powered Android set in the vein of the Droid with a totally wild split-horizontal sliding QWERTY keyboard. Yeah, we want one -- it reminds us of the beloved Nokia 6820, although it's much thinner. We're told this thing is coming to AT&T in Q3, which makes sense; we've only pinned down three of Ma Bell's five planned Android devices, and this would be a nice higher-end compliment to the Backflip. We'll keep an eye out -- and you let us know if you hear anything good, okay?

Update: Yes, we know it's a render, sheesh. We have a bit of a history with Motorola and renders, you know.

Is this the Motorola MOTOSPLIT? originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 25 Jan 2010 00:48:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Intel GMA HD graphics review deems them excellent for video, mediocre for gaming

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/25/intel-gma-hd-graphics-review-deems-them-excellent-for-video-med/

Our Intel Arrandale / Clarkdale review bonanza was sprinkled with a few graphics benchmarks, but there was never a concerted effort to break down the specific upgrades on the 45nm GPU that comes as part of the new CPU package. That omission has now been corrected by Bit-tech, who've delved deep into the murky waters of embedded graphics and report that Intel's focus appears to have been firmly on video playback. Noting full bitstreaming, (our HD editors inform us that's a big deal), Blu-ray with picture-in-picture, and HDMI 1.3a support, the lads commended the "very smooth" 1080p playback of h.264-encoded video. While their conclusion about gaming was less glowing -- finding that Intel's latest gen only keeps up with older hardware -- they couldn't help but recommend the new processors on account of their feature-rich video playback and energy efficiency. More benchmarks at the source link.

Intel GMA HD graphics review deems them excellent for video, mediocre for gaming originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 25 Jan 2010 07:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  sourceBit-tech  | Email this | Comments

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