Friday, September 16, 2011

drag2share: Cook Corn for a Crowd in a Cooler [Cooking Hacks]

Source: http://lifehacker.com/5840092/cook-corn-for-a-crowd-in-a-cooler

Cook Corn for a Crowd in a CoolerIf you want to cook corn for the masses, Bon Appetit suggests a dead simple, ingenious method: "cooler corn."

Basically, fill a large, clean cooler with loads of corn on the cob and pour two kettles-full of boiling water over the corn, then close the top.

30 minutes later, your corn will be perfectly cooked.

Campers and other outdoorsy people probably already know this trick, but the rest of now have a new, neater way to make lots of corn for company.

The Best Way to Cook Corn on the Cob for a Crowd? It's Cooler Corn | Bon Appetit


You can follow or contact Melanie Pinola, the author of this post, on Twitter or Google+.

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drag2share: MoodPanda Charts Your Happiness [Webapps]

Source: http://lifehacker.com/5840577/moodpanda-charts-your-happiness

MoodPanda Charts Your HappinessWeb/iPhone: How happy are you? MoodPanda is an interactive mood diary/journal that measures and keeps track of your happiness, creating neat pie charts and graphs to show you how you've been feeling over time.

Keeping a log of how you feel has been shown to be therapeutic for people who suffer from depression, but it's also useful for others to keep track of things that make them happy. For example, using MoodPanda you can quickly jot down that you were very happy (9) on Monday, noting the sun was out, you exercised and started a new project. You can look back months later and see your progress.

The app lets you update your mood on Twitter and Facebook, compare your mood with others, and also send others virtual hugs (on my first day of trying the service, registering an unhappy 3, I got two hugs from strangers almost immediately, which was uplifting, actually).

If you could use a little more happiness in your life or just like collecting data, give the free service a whirl.

MoodPanda


You can follow or contact Melanie Pinola, the author of this post, on Twitter or Google+.

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drag2share: The Best Backup App for Android [Android App Directory]

Source: http://lifehacker.com/5840664/the-best-backup-app-for-android

The Best Backup App for AndroidThere are a few pretty great backup apps for Android, but our favorite has to be Titanium Backup. It requires a rooted phone, but you can backup and restore apps from Dropbox, run automatic batch backups, and even uninstall crapware.

By the way, should you want to learn how to use Titanium Backup, we've got a guide for that.

The Best Backup App for Android

Titanium Backup

Platform: Android (Rooted)
Price: Free, $5.72 Pro
Download Page

The Best Backup App for Android

  • Back up and restore any app and its settings, including protected and system apps
  • Restores Market links, so the Market will continue updating restored apps
  • Background batch backup and advanced batch restore
  • Automatic batch backup on nearly any schedule you want
  • Move apps to and from the SD card, along with their data
  • Desktop widgets
  • Ability to remove orphan app data
  • App uninstaller, perfect for getting rid of manufacturer-installed bloatware (app freezer available in pro version)
  • Multiple backups per app (Pro only)
  • Backup encryption (Pro only)
  • Multi-user support for some apps, like games, with a widget for quick switching (Pro only)
  • Migrate some system data, like SMS and MMS, across incompatible ROMs (Pro only)
  • Full support for paid apps that can otherwise only be installed through the Market (Pro only)
  • Synchronize some or all backups to Dropbox and restore directly from Dropbox (Pro only)
  • Many more features listed on the home page

The Best Backup App for Android

Titanium can backup just about anything—apps, app data, and even SMS and MMS data, and attempt to restore it to a new phone or new ROM. It doesn't always work, but I'm continually shocked at how much of my data it can restore to new, completely different ROMs or phones. You have tons of control over your backups, with the ability to set complicated schedules, back up different kinds of data on different schedules, and even back up directly to your Dropbox.

Titanium Backup is more than just a great backup app, too—it's like a swiss army knife for Android phones. With the ability to remove crapware, move apps to and from the SD card, and the ability to delete data left over from old apps, it's really a must-have for any rooted Android user. If you only pay for one app from the Market, make it Titanium.

The Best Backup App for Android

Titanium, while powerful, isn't the prettiest app, and can be a little confusing to use at first. Some of the backup options aren't always clear as to what exactly they do. If you're just trying to run basic backups, it isn't so bad, but if you have very specific preferences, you might need to play around with a little bit before you get it to work exactly how you want to.

The Best Backup App for Android

The only real competition to Titanium is MyBackup. Like Titanium, it has a free and a pro version, which can perform many (but not all) of the same tasks. The big advantage to MyBackup is that it doesn't require root, so if you don't want to root your phone, it's your only choice for backup. Note that many of the features that make both apps so cool require root, so the non-rooted version isn't nearly as powerful—but it'll get some of the job done. If you're rooted, you'll have to download the root version. MyBackup isn't nearly as popular as Titanium, but it's probably just about as good, and if you aren't rooted, it's a must-have (though rooting is a pretty easy process these days).

It's also worth mentioning that if you're rooted, nandroid backups are great—and you can perform them easily with ROM Manager or through your recovery mode. It isn't the same as Titanium and MyBackup, though. Titanium and MyBackup will back up your apps, settings, and other data, which is great for migrating to a new ROM or to a new phone. Nandroid backups basically "clone" your system—if you restore from a nandroid backup, everything will be exactly as it was when you backed up, including the ROM itself. This is better for backing up in case your phone crashes, you mess something up and can't boot it, or flash a new ROM that you don't like. Both kinds of backups are essential to Android tweakers, but they perform very different functions.


Lifehacker's App Directory is a new and growing directory of recommendations for the best applications and tools in a number of given categories.


You can contact Whitson Gordon, the author of this post, at whitson@lifehacker.com. You can also find him on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and lurking around our #tips page.
 

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drag2share: How to Plan an Awesome, Last-Minute Vacation on the Cheap [Travel]

Source: http://lifehacker.com/5840381/how-to-plan-an-awesome-last+minute-vacation-on-the-cheap

How to Plan an Awesome, Last-Minute Vacation on the CheapRoutine can be attractive and certainly has its uses, but life is no fun without a little spontaneity. If you've always wanted to visit a new place or just get the hell out of Dodge, make it happen. Here's how to make great, spontaneous travel plans on a budget.

On a personal note: I'm doing this right now, which was the inspiration for writing this post. I'd always wanted to go to Seattle so I just packed up and went. One of the perks of writing for and reading Lifehacker is all the great stuff we've accumulated about traveling well on a budget, so making plans was easy. Actually going on the trip taught me a few things as well. So this post is about sharing both of those things—the practical and frugal way to have a great, last-minute vacation, and what personal experience has taught me about making it even better.

Choosing Your Destination

The important thing you need to remember is that you're being spontaneous, which goes hand-in-hand with not being picky. There are probably a handful of places you want to go, but stay open to ones you haven't thought of yet or don't pick a destination at all. When you're looking for cheap airfare—which we'll get to in a minute—consider locations with great deals. Find fun things to do in the area or just somewhere you can relax. Sometimes driving just an hour outside of town for a change in scenery is enough to do the trick, so don't limit yourself to grand destinations. You might find a perfect getaway somewhere quiet and small. Simply concentrating on finding new experiences, rather than the specific ones in your dreams, is a great way to still have a great time without getting caught up in too much planning.

Making the Time

How to Plan an Awesome, Last-Minute Vacation on the CheapOne of the hardest parts of simply packing up and going anywhere at the last minute is finding the time. In fact, aside from the cost, that's probably why you're sitting at home reading this post rather than enjoying a nice meal in a semi-far off land. If time is holding you back, there are a few things you can do.

First things first—let go. Maybe you only can take a weekend trip because it's truly impossible to get away from work right now. Do it anyway. It may seem hard to justify driving or flying somewhere new when you have to return so soon, especially when it's an added cost, but even a short change of pace can make a huge difference. Even a small change in your work environment can help avoid burnout, so imagine what a weekend away can do.

If you want to, or can get away for longer, however, that's always a plus. The problem is making those plans last minute. If you have sick leave stocked away, it's easy enough to fake an illness to gain yourself a couple of extra days. Sure, this isn't 100% ethical, but mental/emotional sick days are not currently not part of your benefits plan. If you really need one it's not so terrible to fib a little. Alternatively, if you have an understanding boss, just ask. Generally one day off won't be too hard to get and you can always make the case that a quick refresher will let you gain some energy back that you need to be more productive. Additionally, you might be able to negotiate a situation where you're just working remotely. While not all jobs are flexible enough to let you work from home with regularity, if it's a rare request and your job can be done away from the office there's certainly no reason you can't ask.

However you go about it, the important thing is not to find time but make it. If you've been putting off travel plans for awhile, you'll gain quite a bit of relief when you just stop making excuses and do what you want.

Getting a Cheap Flight

How to Plan an Awesome, Last-Minute Vacation on the CheapThere are many ways to get a cheap flight. We love Hipmunk, and now Google Flights, for finding great deals. Invisible Hand is also a great way to get alerts when there's a cheaper flight you might be missing.

But these tools can only take you so far. The best thing you can do is do your own research and weigh your options. When searching for flights, always use a date range search rather than specifics whenever possible. Airlines like Virgin America make this easy as they show you a range by default. Often times you'll cheaper flights in the evening on weekdays, or simply by looking for airfare on a Tuesday afternoon.

The key is just to remain as flexible as possible. If you can't be too flexible with your dates, be flexible with your location. Go somewhere you can drive or that provides a cheap train or bus ticket. For example, there are many inexpensive bus lines between big cities like Boston and New York and regional trains will often offer free parking if you drive to the station. There are plenty of ways to save money, so don't rule anything out and remain open to all possibilities.

(If you want a few more tips, be sure to check out our frequent flier's guide to finding cheap airfare.)

Finding a Place to Stay and Things To Do

How to Plan an Awesome, Last-Minute Vacation on the CheapI think the most fun part of visiting a new place is picking your exact location, as every town or section of a city has something unique and interesting to offer. If you're fond of hotels and want to go that route, there are plenty of tools that can help (like The Bidding Traveler and Hipmunk), but I'd highly recommend using a service like Airbnb or VRBO to find a room or apartment instead. First of all, it's frequently cheaper. Second, you have the option of staying in someone's extra room so you get the benefit of the same privacy a hotel offers plus a local who is (hopefully) friendly enough to give you advice. Even if you simply rent an entire place for yourself, you still get the benefit of having an actual home with a kitchen. Depending on the property, you may also have access to computers, video games, movies, books, etc., so you'll have plenty of things to do should you fail to predict an impending natural disaster and get stuck inside. (Also, personally, I think it's just neat to see how other people live.)

Aside from considering price, when you're choosing a specific location you should pretend that you're moving there. When you approach a trip this way, you'll learn far more about the destination than you would by simply asking what you should do when you get there. Some of the best things any place has to offer are the normal things people do every day. Chances are you're not going to jam-pack tourist attractions into every minute of the trip. At some point you'll probably want to catch a movie at the cool movie theater in town, grab a drink at a esoteric dive bar, pick up a new pair of pants, or something along those lines. Tourists get directed to tourist attractions. Prospective residents get to hear about what normal people do, and sometimes that can reveal the best opportunities. If you've never moved to a new city before, our guide can help you understand how it works. Obviously you're going on a vacation and not actually moving but, as discussed, a lot of the same tips can help.


While planned vacations are definitely fun, the occasional spontaneous trip is a great trump card to play when you're feeling stressed or just want to have a good, exciting experience. Hopefully these tips will help you manage a great, inexpensive, last-minute trip full of lots of great memories. I'm writing this because I'm on one right now and I'm having a great time. I hope you do, too. Also, if you have any additional tips and experiences of your own, please share in the comments!

Title photo remixed from an original by mikie11 and JetKat (Shutterstock)


You can follow Adam Dachis, the author of this post, on Twitter, Google+, and Facebook.  Twitter's the best way to contact him, too.

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drag2share: This Chart Explains the Confusing Hierarchy of Nvidia GeForce Graphics Cards [Charts]

Source: http://lifehacker.com/5840839/this-chart-actually-explains-the-nvidia-geforce-hierarchy-of-video-cards

This Chart Explains the Confusing Hierarchy of Nvidia GeForce Graphics CardsIf you've ever gone shopping for graphics cards, chances are you've been baffled by hardware manufacturer Nvidia's crazy naming scheme for their video cards. This simple chart will help you determine where each falls in a hierarchy of graphics performance.

Anyone who's ever tried to buy an Nvidia card has undoubtedly been confused by the chipset names: you've got the 9500 GT which is somehow worse than a GTX 275, which is somehow better than a GTS 450—the numbers and letters just don't make much sense. Hidden away on Nvidia's web site is this simple graph that compares each of their modern GPUs to one another with a simple benchmark value. Obviously there's a bit more to it than this—certain cards are better at certain things and have different features—but if you're trying to find out where your card falls in the hierarchy of Nvidia cards, this is a pretty simple way to see where it goes.

If you're an AMD fan, you can generally just look at the numbers on the cards (since the hierarchy is fairly well organized), and if you'd like to compare both companies against one another, or if you are comparing cards for actual shopping purposes, you can use something like Anandtech's GPU comparison tool.

The original graph is on the "Performance" page of every video card on geforce.com, so the link below is just one of the many pages on which it appears. Check out geforce.com for more info.

GeForce GTX 550 Ti | GeForce.com via Reddit


You can contact Whitson Gordon, the author of this post, at whitson@lifehacker.com. You can also find him on Twitter, Facebook, and lurking around our #tips page.
 

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drag2share: Music Streaming Service MOG Goes Free, Makes Its Insanely Large Library Available to All [Updates]

Source: http://lifehacker.com/5840843/music-streaming-service-mog-goes-free-makes-its-insanely-large-library-available-to-all

Music Streaming Service MOG Goes Free, Makes Its Insanely Large Library Available to AllMOG, one of our favorite music streaming services, introduced a new free, ad-supported version of its versatile, music-filled streaming service today.

MOG is an interesting type of music streaming service, with a Pandora-style "radio" feature from which you can save playlists, link to your desktop players, and more. Their free plan is similarly unique: instead of just giving you free, ad-supported access to the site, you "earn" free music by listening, sharing with friends, making playlists, and using MOG's features. The more you play with MOG, the more free music you can earn. Their premium subscription plans are still there, with access to the desktop client, mobile apps, and more, but now those uninterested in paying can get access to MOG's awesome service. Hit the link to learn more.

If you haven't used MOG before and you're curious about how it compares to other popular services, check out our showdown of music streaming services here.

MOG is thrilled to announce a free version of our award-winning music service! | The MOG Blog



You can contact Whitson Gordon, the author of this post, at whitson@lifehacker.com. You can also find him on Twitter, Facebook, and lurking around our #tips page.
 

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drag2share: Daily Desired: A Jetset Watch for Non-Billionaires [Desired]

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5840714/daily-desired-a-jetset-watch-for-non+billionaires

Daily Desired: A Jetset Watch for Non-BillionairesRichard Branson and I live very different lives. I haven't left New York in months, and he's probably going to space any day. Luckily Branson put his eccentric billionaire's stamp of approval on a gorgeous Bulova watch for us wannabees.

I can't afford to fly to far fetched places like Sydney, Australia but thanks to the forthcoming Sir Richard Branson Bulova Accutron at least I'll know what time it is there thanks to a clever trick built into the watch. In addition to the standard hour, minute and second hands, the watch has a hand which keeps track of GMT. The names of 24 cities, each corresponding to a time zone, are engraved around the perimeter of the watch. Wanna know what time it is in the famed smoker's lounge at Denver International? Simply twist the outer ring, which moves the cities on the watch's face. When GMT and the GMT hand line up you'll know the time everywhere on Earth. What do you know? It's time for a drink.

The Branson Accutron will be available Fall 2012 and is limited to 500 pieces. It's not cheap but you don't have to be a billionaire to cover the $3,500 price tag. That's less than 2 percent the cost of a flight on Virgin Galactic. [Bulova and PR Newswire via BornRich]

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drag2share: LED Lenser X21 Flashlight Lightning Review: Really, Really, Really Bright [Flashlights]

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5840351/led-lenser-x21-flashlight-lightning-review-really-really-really-bright

LED Lenser X21 Flashlight Lightning Review: Really, Really, Really BrightMaglite's 4 D-cell flashlight spits out around 120 lumens of brightness. The mammoth LED Lenser X21 shoots out 1,200. It's blindingly bright. It lights up entire rooms on its own. It will hurt your eyes. A lot.

Like

Why do you buy a flashlight? To light things up. The X21 is almost too bright. It's extremely visible even in a well-lit room, or outside—photos do it no justice. And because it uses electricity-friendly LEDs, it can beam brilliantly for a long, long time—at its max power mode, we've far surpassed LED Lenser's advertised 2.5 hours. We'll take their word on the 25 hours of 225-lumen low power mode. The thing's also brutally substantial; if you want a flashlight you can drop repeatedly and also bludgeon someone to death with, this is tops.

No Like

The X21's very heavy: 3.25 pounds. This might wear on your wrist if you had to use it for extended periods. But the X21's only real design flaw is the stubborn push motion required to switch the light's lens and mirror mechanism between a focused and diffuse beam. A twisting control would have been much better, or something that didn't require jerky motions.

Should I Buy This?

This is the ultimate emergency flashlight. For reading, it's overkill. But for power outages, wilderness wanderings, or anything dark that needs to be bright as a trillion dollar casino, the X21 is a stellar pick.


LED Lenser X21
Price: $450
Brightness: 1200 Lumens
Weight: 52.49 oz
Battery: 4 x D cells
Length: 15.55-inches
LED Lenser

You can keep up with Sam Biddle, the author of this post, on Twitter, Facebook, or Google+.

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drag2share: Can Streaming Music Services Survive Freemium? [Streaming Music]

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5840669/can-streaming-music-services-survive-freemium

Can Streaming Music Services Survive Freemium?As a response to Spotify's successful US launch, MOG and Rdio have both offered freemium versions of their respective streaming music services. They're scared of losing the war to the Scandinavian invaders. But is it a race to the bottom?

Let's take a look at the models that these companies have adopted. Spotify started the freemium craze by offering free, unlimited access to its desktop service with ads. However, Spotifiers will soon be limited to a certain number of hours every month. MOG's new Freeplay service rewards users with free access to the desktop service for engaging with the service. That means sharing tracks with friends, creating playlists, etc. Basically, users exchange product evangelism for free content—with ads on top, which also generate revenue for the company. Rdio hasn't revealed the full details of its service yet, but it says users will get unlimited, free, access to the service without ads. Record labels can't possibly be pleased about this.

Content providers of all mediums are already leery of the increasingly popular unlimited subscription model. TV and movie companies despise Netflix and Hulu. Record labels have been slow (although more receptive) to embrace the $5-10/month plans offered by streaming music companies. So how long do you think they'll possibly put up with freemium models? Or how long can Rdio and MOG and the rest sustain it while still appeasing their label overloards?

Spotify operated in the red for years before gaining the number of users to make money off its freemium model. Its successful U.S. launch—reportedly millions-strong—was just the cherry on top of an already highly successful European subscriber base sundae. MOG and Rdio are a different story. They both still have relatively small user bases, and going with a free access model in hopes of stealing some of Spotify's users is risky—they cant serve up nearly as many eyeballs (earholes?) to advertisers in the longrun. It's a desperation move, and one that might end up destroying them.

There's hope, though, that these companies could succeed and really change the way we get music. And it's in your smartphone.

One thing nobody offers right now is free access to their services on smartphones and tablets (Rdio hasn't said anything about this one way or another, but people in the know I've talked to say that labels aren't considering this option yet.) It's pretty easy to see the gameplan here: get users so accustomed to listening to music through the services that they stop buying/pirating music altogether. Soon they'll want anywhere access not only to music, but to the collection and playlists you've compiled. They'll realize it's easier to cough up a subscription fee than to buy and or rebuild all that saved-up content.

This strategy revolves entirely around having a lot of users actively using these services, hence the competition to see who can be more cutthroat. The companies who lose are going to lose big as a result of putting subscription numbers before revenue. I'd feel more comfortable about the prospects of all these guys if they adapted a model more like Lala used to, where everyone could listen to any song a limited number of times before having to pay for it.

I really hope someone (if not everyone) wins out here, because the unlimited streaming model is an amazing way to access music and has the potential to benefit both musicians, their corporate overlords, and most clearly you the listener. But this concept was already seen as a low profit margin venture to begin with, and it's only becoming less profitable. Failure from all of these companies would set all this progress back at least five years, when the iTunes a la carte method was seen as revolutionary.

Look, when you make yourself so dependent on advertising, it makes perfect sense that there's a race for subscribers over cash. Let's just hope that it's not a race to oblivion.

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drag2share: Fraunhofer's STAN: four cameras, three dimensions, no glasses

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/09/15/fraunhofers-stan-four-cameras-three-dimensions-no-glasses/

There are some glasses-free 3D TVs around, but their limited viewing angles and poor picture quality aren't very inspiring -- so Fraunhofer's latest project is a welcome endeavor. It's developed STAN (STereoscopic ANalyzer), a system that lets broadcasters easily use four cameras instead of the usual two, for 3D recording. 3D needs a minimum of two lenses to register depth and keeping multiple shooters in sync is tough and expensive. That's led to the industry relying on two, which is why glasses-free (autostereoscopic) 3D TVs get such a poor picture; more cameras means more viewing angles. STAN co-ordinates the setup of the four cameras and then uses a feature detector to identify common elements in the pictures and merges them into a 3D image. Four cameras provide much more depth, which means more viewing angles, which means that if STAN gets picked up, these guys can throw away the sunglasses, even for live broadcasts.

Fraunhofer's STAN: four cameras, three dimensions, no glasses originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 15 Sep 2011 15:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Thursday, September 15, 2011

drag2share: Shocker: Verizon director admits to LTE-Advanced future

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/09/15/shocker-verizon-director-admits-to-lte-advanced-future/

AT&T took to the stage to announce its LTE network will go live on Sunday, which means today's the perfect day for its fiercest rival to one-up the news. Verizon's director of network technology Praveen Atreya, dropped the rather unsurprising news that the next natural step in the company's data evolution chain will be LTE-Advanced. Don't get your hopes up so fast, though: Atreya says it's still too early in the game to test the new tech or figure out its potential speeds (spoiler: they'll be disgustingly fast), so we're likely not going to see any widescale deployment for at least the next few years. Still, we're always looking forward to the next best thing, so learning that Big Red is following Clearwire's lead in adopting the technology is reassuring, to say the least.

Shocker: Verizon director admits to LTE-Advanced future originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 15 Sep 2011 16:49:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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drag2share: Samsung Epic 4G Touch review

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/09/15/samsung-epic-4g-touch-review/

If you haven't heard about the Samsung Galaxy S II by now, you're definitely tardy to the party. But as the proverbial saying goes, it's better late than never, right? The Galaxy S, its predecessor with myriad chassis selections and carrier variants, is still selling like hotcakes all over the world, and the sequel is no lightweight (figuratively) either -- selling three million units in 55 days only seems to be rivaled by a company based out of Cupertino -- and for good reason. We gave the unlocked version high marks for its excellent performance, gorgeous display and top-of-the-line camera, so it was only natural that we'd spend the next four months wondering when we'd see the powerhouse make it Stateside.

Don't get us wrong -- we've seen our fair share of unlocked Galaxy S II devices proudly shown off in the US (most of them from our own editors, admittedly) because it's already available at full retail (roughly $650-700) from multiple vendors. However, the Samsung Epic 4G Touch is the first to be offered at a subsidized cost in return for a two-year commitment, and it won't be the last as AT&T and T-Mobile pull up the rear with their own styles of the same handset. So how does the landmark phone stand up to not only the test of time but several carrier-specific design changes? Are Sprint customers getting a "tainted" version of Sammy's flagship Android device? These questions have been pondered for months, and we finally have the answers if you keep on reading.

Continue reading Samsung Epic 4G Touch review

Samsung Epic 4G Touch review originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 15 Sep 2011 17:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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drag2share: MasterCard demos Google Wallet, QkR platform for mobile payments

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/09/15/mastercard-demos-google-wallet-qkr-platform-for-mobile-payments/

You've most likely heard plenty about NFC-capable smartphones, but little in the way of actual real-world uses for the chip. Well, MasterCard's looking to change all of that, and throw in a few innovations of its own courtesy of its in-house R&D labs and Google. Shown off at an event today, the company demoed the Google Wallet application we first learned about back in May -- which is gearing up for an official launch sometime "soon." Running on Sprint's Nexus S 4G -- with a planned expansion to multiple devices -- users can connect a Citi MasterCard account to the service, and tap-to-pay at any retail location outfitted with a PayPass station. The transactions take place as instantaneously as you'd expect, with spending alerts notated automatically in-app, as well as via text message. If you're the paranoid type or just a spendthrift, the app offers plenty of options to set spending limits, approve / block purchases via category (i.e. dining, entertainment) and enable alerts for overseas activity. Currently, the Google Wallet service is Android-only, and that's probably a direct result of the AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile backed mobile payment rival, ISIS.

But the company's also got one eye fixed squarely on the future -- scheming up alternate implementations for payment on-the-go through its MasterCard Labs division. Focusing on its QkR platform (an obvious play on QR codes), these concepts ranged from television audio signals encoded with purchase data, audible to a phone running the QkR app, or fast-food tabletops embedded with NFC and QR codes that'll allow customers to scan for coupons, order remotely and apply the discount -- all without leaving their seats. The most interesting use of the new platform, however, had nothing to do with mobile phone use and everything to do with an Xbox Kinect. Utilizing the gesture recognition tech, items could be selected on-screen by holding your hand over an item and navigating through the checkout process. We know, yet another great proof-of-concept, but tuck away that cynicism for a second -- a company representative confided to us that soft-pilot testing of QkR is already underway, with an official announcement slated in the next two weeks. And don't worry about it being a Google OS-only affair, QkR's been tested across iOS, Windows Phone Mango and even BlackBerry. Whether or not the innovative payment system'll launch with all of these mobile OS on-board wasn't clear, but we were assured there'd be at least two partners on board. Jump past the break to get a close-up view of our hands-on with the future of payment.

Continue reading MasterCard demos Google Wallet, QkR platform for mobile payments

MasterCard demos Google Wallet, QkR platform for mobile payments originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 15 Sep 2011 17:32:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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drag2share: PayPal to add mobile payment features, hopes to redefine how we shop (till we drop)

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/09/15/paypal-to-add-mobile-payment-features-hopes-to-redefine-how-we/

Like the side ponytail craze of the '80s, the newest trend is turning out to be the mobile wallet -- especially as major players like Google, MasterCard, Verizon, Discover and now PayPal board the bandwagon. Our old buddy -- best known for its love affair with eBay (and ripping our own Darren Murph off a solid two large) -- has plans to implement new payment features primarily for (but not limited to) mobile. On the to-do list are things like QR / barcode scans, hyper local deals, fast checkout via NFC, etc. The company is adamant that it's not "just shoving a credit card on a phone," but rather planning to change the whole shopping experience. We'll know more when PayPal releases more details in early October, and when it launches the pilot product sometime later this year. Until then, check out the semi-cryptic video while brushing up on old episodes of SuperMarket Sweep after the break.

Continue reading PayPal to add mobile payment features, hopes to redefine how we shop (till we drop)

PayPal to add mobile payment features, hopes to redefine how we shop (till we drop) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 15 Sep 2011 21:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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drag2share: Archos' G9 Android Tablets Have Superfast Processors and... Hard Drives? [Android]

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5840543/archos-g9-tablets-have-super+fast-processors-and-big-ass-harddrives

Archos' G9 Android Tablets Have Superfast Processors and... Hard Drives?Archos Android tablets. Typically considered also-rans, but these things do have a 1.5GHz dual-core processor and up to 250GB harddrives.

The 10-inch G9 "Turbo" is packing Texas Instruments 1.5 GHz dual-core OMAP 4 processor, and Archos claims that will make page loading 50 percent faster than competitors tablets (which typically run 1GHz dual-core Nvidia processors). I cannot wait to find out if that's actually true. The 8-inch model also use a dual-core TI OMAP 4, but it will only be clocked to 1GHz.

The biggest point of differentiation is that these guys have the option of gargantuan 250GB harddrives from Seagate. While that's eight times more storage than the more common 32GB tabs, something important to keep in mind is that this isn't SSD, it's a regular old spinning harddrive. Spinning harddrives are bigger, heavier, more fragile, and way more energy-hungry. Not only that, they're slower. Will the spinning harddrive totally hamstring the superfast processor? (To be clear, both tablets come standard with 16GB of flash memory. These larger options are optional with additional cost.) Archos claims that these Seagate drives' special "4GB flash caching system" will make it just as fast as flash. Right. They also note that these drives will spin up only when in use, so it's likely that these tablets contain enough flash storage to run the OS and probably all of your apps, and the 250GB would just be used for storing media.

Archos' G9 Android Tablets Have Superfast Processors and... Hard Drives?The G9 80 has an 8-inch, 1024 x 768 4:3 screen, similar to the iPad, aiming more at e-book readers. The G9 101 has a 10.1-inch, 1280 x 800 16:10 screen, similar to other widescreen Android tablets, emphasizing video and multimedia. Both tablets have enhanced video players (more codecs for you sneaky torrenters) and HDMI out, and you should be able to cram 50 hours of 1080p video onto those harddrives. They're both Wi-Fi but they have full-sized USB ports (which I love), so you may be able to attach a wireless dongle, maybe. They both run Android 3.2 Honeycomb without any kind of skin.

These suckers are starting at $299 for the eight-incher and $399 for the tenner. Options are the 16GB solid state vs. the 250GB HD, and you can chose to upgrade to a 1.5GHz processor in the 8-inch model, too (see price breakdown below). My biggest reservation is the spinning harddrive they've put in these things. While that kind of capacity is neat, do we really need it in a tablet? Further, tablets are portable devices and most standard harddrives don't like to be moved while they're spinning, plus there's heat and energy consumption to think about. Regardless, I like seeing manufacturers differentiating themselves by their hardware, and not by putting a crappy overlay over Android. They will both be available in late September.

Updated pricing breakdown:
• ARCHOS 80 G9 8GB – 1 GHZ at $299
• ARCHOS 80 G9 16GB - 1.5 GHz at $329
• ARCHOS 80 G9 250GB – 1.5 GHz at $369
• ARCHOS 101 G9 16GB – 1.5 GHz at $399
• ARCHOS 101 G9 250GB – 1.5 GHz at $469


You can keep up with Brent Rose, the author of this post, on Google+ or Twitter.

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drag2share: Public Google+ Posts Have Fallen 41 Percent. What Does That Mean? [Google+]

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5840583/public-google%252B-posts-have-fallen-41-percent-what-does-that-mean

Public Google+ Posts Have Fallen 41 Percent. What Does That Mean?Either Google+ is the North Korea of social media, or things aren't going quite as well as we'd hoped. Public posting on The Hermit Network has fallen 41 percent per user from August to September, from 0.68 to 0.40.

Yes, yes, the point of the network is that posts don't have to be public. But we also knew that going in, and clearly a 41 percent drop in anything over a given month is significant.

It could be more folks are finally catching on to the benefits of non-public posting. Or that the casual, hey-what's-this-thing-that's-not-Facebook users are falling away and taking a disproportionately high percent of public posts with them. Or yes, it could also just mean there's a more linear user exodus going on.

Without numbers for private posting, we can't be sure, but something's clearly going on here. What have you guys noticed in your Circles? [TechCrunch]

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drag2share: Why Google Needs to Peep at the World's Most Efficient Data Center [Video]

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5840347/why-google-needs-to-peep-at-the-worlds-most-efficient-data-center

Why Google Needs to Peep at the World's Most Efficient Data Center114. That's how many HP EcoPOD server systems it would take to power all of Google.

The problem with traditional, brick-and-mortar data centers is that they require a huge up-front investment of both time and money; they're often under-utilized; and generally cost more money and energy in terms of overhead than actual computing. All horribly inefficient, even if you don't take into account that they cost more than $15 million a year to operate on average. Modular Data Centers, on the other hand, address many of these issues with increased efficiency via smaller footprints, faster deployment, better scalability (since you're only paying for the capacity you currently need, you can add and reduce capacity more easily) and lower operating costs than their brink-and-mortar brethren.

The HP Performance Optimized Data Center 240a, more commonly known as the HP EcoPOD, is the King Kong of Mobile Data Centers—if they were the height of Scrappy Doo. It provides an extremely energy-efficient, high-performance server center with a higher power density, lower operating cost, faster deployment time and a footprint 1/10th the size of the traditional data center.

First, the EcoPOD can be up and running within 12 weeks from the time of the order—up to 88 percent faster than the average 24-month lead times of traditional centers. The entire system is modular—including integrated power, cooling, security, fire suppression, management, and monitoring suites—and it all comes pre-assembled and pretested to the customer's specs directly from the factory. Much like a pre-fab home, it's built via assembly line, which decreases production time.

Built from two, 40-foot shipping containers, the EcoPOD measures just over 45 feet long, 23 feet wide, nearly 21 feet tall, and weighs 425,000 pounds. However, within this minimal space, you can cram as many as 44 industry-standard, 50-server racks—each weighing 3,500 pounds—for a total of 2,200 servers with more than 7,000 server nodes. It can also support up to 24,000 large form factor hard drives. The EcoPOD uses dual, flywheel-based power sources—known as the CleanSource UPS, created by Active Power in Texas and valued at nearly $2 million—that combine for a maximum total of 2.3MW.

They produce average rack power densities of around 44kW and as much as 69kW under the right conditions—versus traditional centers that produce roughly 6 to 8 kW per 42U rack. And because it's so much smaller than a traditional server farm and completely integrated within itself, it requires significantly less site prep and fewer external safety systems.

To keep all this equipment from overheating and melting itself, the EcoPOD employs an advanced cooling system—Adaptive Cooling—that automatically adjusts between three ventilation modes: Free air that uses ambient air pumped in from outside whenever possible, Direct Expansion (DX) assisted (part ambient air, part A/C), or Full DX, based on the server load and environmental conditions. In Direct Expansion systems, the evaporator coil sits in direct contact with the air flow and also acts as the cooling coil. With either mode, more than 3800 cubic feet of air circulate past the servers every minute.

What's more, the EcoPOD boasts an absolutely insane PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness) of between 1.05 to 1.3, depending on the server load and which cooling system is active. A data center's PUE measures how much of the electricity it uses actually goes toward computing, rather than cooling or monitoring. Ideally, a center's PUE should be 1.0—all the energy the center consumes goes towards the computers (PUE=total power/IT power). Normally, a Brick-and-Mortar data center averages about 2.4—double that of the EcoPOD! Altogether, the EcoPOD server system costs a paltry $500,000 a year to operate—31 times less than a similarly powered traditional data center.

[HP (.pdf) - HP (.pdf) - Marc Hamilton - DataCenterKnowledge - Trane - The Register]

Monster Machines is all about the most exceptional machines in the world, from massive gadgets of destruction to tiny machines of precision, and everything in between.


You can keep up with Andrew Tarantola, the author of this post, on Twitter, Facebook, or Google+.

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drag2share: Ricoh GR Digital IV: A Fast Camera Gets Faster [Cameras]

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5840594/ricoh-gr-digital-iv-a-fast-camera-gets-faster/gallery/1

Ricoh GR Digital IV: A Fast Camera Gets FasterRicoh's new GR Digital IV is stocked with the same 28mm f/1.9 lens (fast) that made its predecessor awesome and a new .2 second autofocus. (Faster.)

How much faster? Twice as fast as the GR Digital III. The key to the blazing focus speed is the hybrid AF which combines the information from Ricoh's new external autofocus sensor with the internal one. Ricoh also added a continuous AF mode that shoots 1.54 fps.

What else is new? The high-resolution three-inch LCD has been upgraded to 1.23 million dots. The sensor's been equipped with a new stabilizer to help reduce blur. And unlike most things that get faster, the GR Digital IV also got a little fatter, growing 7mm to 32.5mm wide.

Like the GR Digital III and the brand new Canon S100 this camera is a serious photographer's pocket camera. But while the S100 got some refreshed hardware, the GR Digital IV is stuck with the same lens and 10 megapixel CCD sensor—very nice but not new. At least when its available sometime soon, the GR Digital IV will come in an eye-catching limited edition white. (Don't ask why a photographer wants to be eye-catching.) No word on price. [Ricoh]

Ricoh GR Digital IV: A Fast Camera Gets Faster


Ricoh GR Digital IV: A Fast Camera Gets Faster

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drag2share: Koomey's law heckles Moore's in the post-PC world

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/09/15/koomeys-law-heckles-moores-in-the-post-pc-world/

Around the same time most years, (2007, 2009, 2010), someone heralds the death of Moore's law. This time it's Stanford University's Dr. Jonathan Koomey, who has found that energy efficiency roughly doubles every two years. With the rise of mobile devices, we care less if our phones and tablets can outpace a desktop and more about if a full charge will last the duration of our commute -- reducing the importance of Moore's law. Historically, efficiency has been a secondary concern as manufacturers built ever faster CPUs, but Koomey believes there is enormous room for improvement. In 1985, Dr. Richard Feynman calculated an efficiency upper limit of Factor 100 Billion -- since then we've only managed to achieve Factor 40,000. Let's just hope Quantum Computing goes mainstream before next autumn so we can get on with more important things.

Koomey's law heckles Moore's in the post-PC world originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 15 Sep 2011 14:50:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Perm! alink Technology Review  |  sourceIEEE Computer Society (Subscription required)  | Email this | Comments

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drag2share: West Virginia's 'Quiet Zone' becomes refuge for those on the run from wireless technology

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/09/15/west-virginias-quiet-zone-becomes-refuge-for-those-on-the-run/

There's a 13,000-square-mile section of West Virginia known as the Quiet Zone where there's no WiFi, no cell service, and strict regulations placed on any device that could pollute the airwaves. Those unique conditions are enforced (and aided by the surrounding mountains) to protect the radio telescopes in the area from interference, and it's hardly anything new -- as The Huffington Post notes, Wired did an extensive profile of the zone back in 2004 (the area itself was established in 1958). But as the BBC recently reported, the Quiet Zone is also now serving as something of a refuge for people who believe that wireless technology makes them sick -- a condition sometimes called Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity (or EHS). Those claims are, of course, in dispute by most medical professionals, but that apparently hasn't stopped folks from calling the local real estate agent "every other week or so" to inquire about a place in the zone.

[Image courtesy NRAO]

West Virginia's 'Quiet Zone' becomes refuge for those on the run from wireless technology originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 15 Sep 2011 15:12:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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