Thursday, December 29, 2011

drag2share: Why Did This Kickstarter Project Raise $400,000?

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/twine-kickstarter-2011-12


twine kickstarter project

We stumbled on a neat little Kickstarter project this afternoon, and it appears to be a bigger deal than meets the eye.

It's called Twine, a tiny rectangular gadget that looks like a translucent bar of soap. And it's become a big deal on Kickstarter.

Twine has built in sensors for detecting movement, temperature, moisture, switches, and inputs from pretty much any other gizmo you can think of.

Oh yeah, it can tweet too.

Twine comes with a simple web app so you can program it to send out a tweet, email, or text message under an unlimited number of scenarios. Laundry done? Have Twine send you a text. Can't hear your doorbell? Have Twine tweet at you.

You get the idea.

Out of the $35,000 the makers of Twine asked for to get their project off the ground, donors have given the doled out more than $427,000 as of this writing.

The funding round ends on January 3. After that, we assume Twine will go into production.

Check out the video demo below:

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drag2share: Dropbox Automator Automatically Processes Images, Text, PDFs and Other Files in Your Dropbox Any Way You Choose [Web Apps]

Source: http://lifehacker.com/5871755/dropbox-automator-automatically-processes-images-text-pdfs-and-other-files-in-your-dropbox-any-way-you-choose

Dropbox Automator Automatically Processes Images, Text, PDFs and Other Files in Your Dropbox Any Way You ChooseDropbox Automator is a powerful web app that connects to your Dropbox account and monitors folders of your choice, performing automated actions you define when new files are detected. This can be anything from converting a document to PDF, resizing images and uploading them to Facebook, plus a whole lot more.

The set up process is pretty simple. You'll need to authorize Dropbox Automator to access your files to get started, and when doing so it'll show up as Wappwolf—the service that powers it. Once you've got that out of the way, you can select a folder you want to use for automation. Unfortunately you cannot create a new folder from within Dropbox Automator, so if you want to add a new one you should do that on your local machine before you log in (or just reload the page if you already have). Once you select the folder you want, you can start assigning actions from the provided list. They're all pretty self-explanatory, but the labels on some of the action options are not as human-readable as they could be. If you read them carefully they'll make sense, but currently they appear to be labeled by their method names. Once you're past that little bit of confusion and you've selected all you're actions, just save your choices and you're all set. Now any relevant files placed in the Dropbox folder you chose will be subject to the automation you set up.

Note: Processing takes a minute and the results will show up in a folder called "results." A folder called "processed" will appear first, containing the files that were just processed. Those will be the unaltered copies. Wait for the "results" folder to appear to see the actual results.

This is a very useful tool that can do a lot with the stuff you keep in your Dropbox without any work on your part. It's still a little rough around the edges, but definitely worth a look.

Dropbox Automator

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drag2share: Most Popular Blu-Ray Playback Suite: Cyberlink PowerDVD [Hive Five Followup]

Source: http://lifehacker.com/5871407/most-popular-blu+ray-playback-suite-cyberlink-powerdvd

Most Popular Blu-Ray Playback Suite: Cyberlink PowerDVD Watching Blu-ray movies on your HTPC or on a Blu-ray enabled laptop is easier than ever. There are a number of players that promise to play Blu-ray video as long as you have a Blu-ray drive in your system, and last week we asked you asked you which tool you used for the job. Then we took a look at the top five Blu-ray playback suites. Now we're back to crown the overall winner.

CyberLink PowerDVD took the top spot with 40% of the votes cast, the far and away winner. Second place was hotly contested however, with AnyDVD HD taking second place with just under 24%, and PotPlayer took the third place slot with 21% of the votes cast. In fourth place was ArcSoft Total Media with close to 10% of the votes cast, and Corel WinDVD Pro bringing up the rear in 5th place with under 5% of the overall vote.

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drag2share: DrugCite Tells You the Side Effects of Nearly Any Medicine and Provides Helpful, Relevant Statistics [Web Apps]

Source: http://lifehacker.com/5871707/drugcite-tells-you-the-side-effects-of-nearly-any-medicine-and-provides-helpful-relevant-statistics

DrugCite Tells You the Side Effects of Nearly Any Medicine and Provides Helpful, Relevant StatisticsDrugCite is a useful database of information about the prescription and over-the-counter medication, allowing you to look up the possible side effects of specific drugs and see statistics about their reported problems.

If you were to look up the allergy medicine Allegra, you'd find that the highest number of problems with the drug were reported around 2005, and that the majority of problems were neurological. DrugCite provides simple graphs that break down the number of reported issues related to the medicine in question and cross-reference that information to provide other useful statistics. Each drug report will also tell you its age, the number of adverse reports over its lifespan, and a gender breakdown of that report. Over 40 years, Allegra only received 2,710 reports. That's only about 68 per year, and that's out of millions of people. While low numbers don't guarantee you anything, and these statistics are only related to reported issues, if you're worried about taking a specific type of medication it can help to see how rare certain problems are to make yourself a little more comfortable.

DrugCite

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drag2share: LG unveils 84-inch 'ultra definition' 4K TV it's bringing to CES 2012

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/12/28/lg-unveils-84-inch-ultra-definition-4k-tv-its-bringing-to-ces/

LG let us know at CES 2011 that it had 4K LCD televisions in the pipeline, but unfortunately they didn't make it out this year. Expect for that to change in 2012, as the company just announced it's bringing an 84-inch "ultra definition" (3840x2160) TV to Las Vegas to go along with its 55-inch OLED. It has all of LG's Cinema 3D and Smart TV features built-in, including support for that upgraded Magic Motion remote and voice control. There's no official word yet on when we'll see these on shelves or at what price, but it certainly looks production ready compared to other prototypes that have been displayed over the years. While we don't have easy sources of 4K-res video content yet, one of the reasons LG is making the jump first is for 3D. Its Cinema 3D tech uses a Film Pattern Retarder (FPR) screen and passive glasses that result in lowered resolution, but with those extra pixels there's no question about whether viewers are still getting at least an HD picture. So far 4K at home is the domain of Sony and JVC's high-priced projectors, but we'll see if any other companies (we'll check off Toshiba right now) show off upgrades in size and resolution of their HDTVs this year. Check the press release after the break for a few more details.

Gallery: LG 4K UDTV

Continue reading LG unveils 84-inch 'ultra definition' 4K TV it's bringing to CES 2012

LG unveils 84-inch 'ultra definition' 4K TV it's bringing to CES 2012 originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 28 Dec 2011 23:14:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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drag2share: This Tabletphone Has Shipped 1 Million Units And Isn't Even Out In The US Yet

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/galaxy-note-2011-12


galaxy note

The Samsung Galaxy Note has shipped 1 million units in less than 2 months, reports The Verge.

This doesn't mean 1 million end users have bought it, but that 1 million units have been sold to retailers around the world.

Consumers in Asia and Europe seem to have taken a particular liking to it.

The device has a huge 5.3" screen and a stylus, blurring the line between smartphone and tablet.

We have yet to see a device quite like this in the States, but when it arrives in 2012 we'll get to see how American consumers respond to it.

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Wednesday, December 28, 2011

drag2share: Zeo Mobile Is A Delight to Sleep With [Fitmodo]

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5871451/zeo-mobile-is-a-delight-to-sleep-with

Zeo Mobile Is A Delight to Sleep WithI'm tired. I'm old and I'm groggy and mentally slow. I don't get enough exercise, or family time, and I'm sick too often. I don't perform my best at work, or anywhere else, and I'm grumpy when I don't mean to be and it's all largely because I'm so damn tired.

Next year, I want to get a better night's sleep. Maybe you do too. The $99 Zeo Mobile can help.

Sleep is so strange and mysterious. Why do we need it? It's restorative, sure, but on a fundamental evolutionary level it's such a weird process. Why should I have to power down every night? Go without it for an extended duration, and you basically go nuts. Get too little of it over time, and you become fatigued and ineffective. Get too much and you waste your life away. What's the deal?

So, it's little wonder that we're under a deluge of sleep tracking services. The Fitbit, Sleep Cycle, Path, and the Jawbone UP all spent much of last year trying to count your Zzzzzz's. One of the newest entries is the Zeo Mobile, which is a more portable, smartphone-based version of its bedside sleep monitoring system.

So what's it tracking? And how does it track?

Most sleep trackers use a simple accelerometer to calculate REM sleep, assuming that you are dreaming as you are moving. Zeo does things a little differently. The headband measures brain activity as you sleep. That helps it break down your important sleep stages: REM, deep and light sleep. (Interestingly, the company also has an accelerometer in the Zeo Mobile, but it's not in use yet.)

Every night, as you go to bed, you place an adjustable headband around your noggin' and fire up the Zeo app on your phone (iOS and Android only for now). Throughout the night, the headband tracks your sleep stages and quality and sends that data to your phone via Bluetooth. The app will automatically upload everything to Zeo's website, where you can dive even deeper into your sleep data.

The mobile app (and to an even greater extent Website) makes understanding all this really easy and interesting. It visualizes your sleep each night, segmenting it up moment-by-moment into color-coded bands for deep sleep, light sleep, REM sleep and wakefulness. Green is good; red is bad. Easy!

It also scores each night's sleep with a Zeo Quotent, or ZQ, score. The ZQ is a little bit of science and a little bit of marketing. But it's a quick, easy way to gauge your sleep each night, and there's an age and gender-based dataset for you to compare your ZQ with other averages.

It even has a smart alarm. Choose a time you'd like to wake up, and give it a time window (like 15 or 30 minutes) and the Zeo will monitor your brain waves to find the best time to wake you based on when you are in your lightest sleep cycle closest to your target wake time.

But mostly, this thing is about data. And there was a lot of interesting data to uncover. For example, I found that although it can take me several hours to hit my first REM sleep cycle during the night, when I nap I tended to tap into it right away, and stay in it just about the entire time. This propensity for the body to drop into REM quickly during naps was something I'd read about before in relation to polyphasic sleep, but seeing it take place with my own body made a strong argument for the occasional nap when I don't get a good night's sleep.

I also saw proof of something I'd thought for a long time—it takes me an inordinately long time to go to sleep at night. It was often 45 minutes or more from the time I turned on the Zeo and out the lights until I was actually snoozing.

The great thing about learning all this is that it's not only interesting, it's largely actionable. Zeo has an online coaching program that helps your analyze the sleep you are getting, and make lifestyle changes accordingly. This component is something that's all too often missing from, well, all kinds of biofeedback tracking devices. I found that I don't get a great amount of deep and REM sleep. Some of that is probably booze-related. Some of it probably has to do with the baby monitor beside my bed. Some of it has to do with checking my email right before I go to bed. I loved that it helped me understand not only what was happening, but why and how to change it.


Bad Dreams

Still. There were several things I wasn't crazy about. The most obvious thing is that wearing a headband to bed every night is a little off-putting. It was surprisingly comfortable, I expected it to be more awkward. But I was always aware of it. And worse, so was my partner. It's not a sexy look.

But moreover it has connectivity problems. mean that in two senses of the word. You've got to seat the headphone on its base exactly right for it to charge up. If you're off, even by a little bit, it won't charge. This means that sometimes after you put it on and got to sleep it dies in the night, leaving you with incomplete sleep data.

I also had, on a couple of occasions, instances where my phone didn't receive data from the headband at various points in the night. I'm not sure if this was a Bluetooth problem, or an issue with the headband not being on my forehead properly, or what. But there were gaps.

And finally: I'm a little weirded out by wearing a Bluetooth antenna right on my skull all night long. Hey, that's my brain!

Should I Buy This

Yes. By all means. Despite a few minor problems, it's great and I expect it will only get better with time. Zeo tracks hard to capture data, shows it to you in an easily digestible manner and helps you understand and act on those numbers. And it does it all at a great price. It's a very well-done health and wellness product, and I'd certainly recommend it to anyone looking to improve his or her sleep patterns. Sweet dreams.

$99 [My Zeo]

Fitmodo runs Wednesdays, covering the world of personal fitness technology. You can play along on our Fitocracy group or the Fitmodo Forum.

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drag2share: Intel starts shipping Atom N2600, N2800 processors for netbooks, ten hours of battery life promised

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/12/28/intel-starts-shipping-atom-n2600-n2800-processors-ten-hours-of/

We've already seen a few benchmarks and other hints that they'd soon be shipping, and Intel has now officially announced that its new Cedar Trail Atom processors are finally available, with the first systems using them set to roll out early next year. The two chips you'll likely be seeing the most of are the Atom N2600 and N2800 -- both dual-core, and both designed for use in netbooks, where they promise to allow for up to ten hours of battery life and "weeks of standby," and offer support for 1080p video playback. Also rolling out today are the D2500 and D2700, which are designed for use in entry-level desktops and all-in-one computers, as well as more commercial systems. As for all those systems themselves, details remain a bit light, but Intel says you can expect to see some from Acer, Asus, HP, Lenovo, Samsung, and Toshiba.

Continue reading Intel starts shipping Atom N2600, N2800 processors for netbooks, ten hours of battery life promised

Intel starts shipping Atom N2600, N2800 processors for netbooks, ten hours of battery life promised originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 28 ! Dec 2011 12:54:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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drag2share: RunCore outs new storage solutions for CES, Marvell-based Falcon series included

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/12/28/runcore-outs-new-storage-solutions-for-ces-marvell-based-falcon/

If you're looking to quell your inner storage enthusiast after the holidays, RunCore may have something to satisfy your appetite. The company announced that it has two products intended for launch at CES. The Falcon series is a Marvell-based storage solution that boasts R / W IOPS speeds that best the outfit's Pro V SATA 6Gb/s SSDs. Speaking of the Pro V series, RunCore is looking to set up shop in Ultrabooks with a 7mm model of its 2.5-inch SATA 6Gb/s SSD with 540 MB/s read and 500 MB/s write speeds. Looking for a bit more info? Hit the full PR after the break.

Continue reading RunCore outs new storage solutions for CES, Marvell-based Falcon series included

RunCore outs new storage solutions for CES, Marvell-based Falcon series included originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 28 Dec 2011 18:52:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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drag2share: Researcher finds vulnerability in WPS protocol, looks for manufacturers to offer fix

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/12/28/researcher-finds-vulnerability-in-wps-protocol-looks-for-manufa/

On the plus side, your router's mostly secure. Security researcher Stefan Viehbock has just discovered a major security hole which allowed him to use a brute force technique to access a WPS PIN-protected network in about two hours. According to Viehbock, a design flaw allows the WPS protocol's 8-digit PIN security to fall dramatically as additional attempts are made. With each attempt, the router will send a message stating whether the first four digits are correct while the last digit of the key is used as a checksum and then given out by the router in negotiation. As a result, the 100,000,000 possibilities that the WPS should represent becomes roughly to 11,000.

The US-CERT has picked up on this and advised users to disable WPS on their routers. Viehbock, in turn, claims to have attempted to discuss the vulnerability with hardware vendors such as Buffalo, D-Link, Linksys, and Netgear, but says he has been roundly ignored and that no public acknowledgement of the issue has been released. As a possible final step, Viehbock has promised to release a brute force tool soon, thereby pushing the manufacturers to work to resolve the issue. In other news, that evil supercomputer from the movie War Games just got a few more digits of the nuclear launch codes -- maybe one of Stefan's pals can look into that one.

Researcher finds vulnerability in WPS protocol, looks for manufacturers to offer fix originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 28 Dec 2011 19:55:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink The Verge  |  sourceStefan Viehbock, US-CERT  |  Email this | Comments

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drag2share: INSIDE THE RASPBERRY PI: How This $25 Computer (Yes, Computer!) Could Change The World

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/inside-the-raspberry-pi-how-this-25-computer-could-change-the-world-2011-12


raspberry pi 2

The Raspberry Pi is a $25 computer that is powerful enough to run Quake 3, a pretty intense 3D video game. It plugs straight into a TV with an HDMI output and it's designed to be cheap enough that anyone can buy.

So why is the Raspberry Pi foundation, the organization behind this charming device, making the computers in the first place?

We spoke with Eben Upton, executive director of the Raspberry Pi foundation to find out why. Here's what we learned:

  • It's primarily intended for the education market. The whole idea was conceived as a way to get kids to learn how to manipulate and program computers earlier on.
  • The Raspberry Pi foundation wants to open-source the technology so "a company in China can produce a million computers" for developing countries and schools. The foundation expects third parties to start developing Raspberry Pi devices midway through 2012.
  • The multimedia performance of the Raspberry Pi is "substantially better" than the Tegra 3, a chip used in many modern smartphones, Upton said. The only smartphone that comes close to the Raspberry Pi's performance is the Galaxy S 2, he said.
  • They don't intend to make money off it. While you could easily turn something like this into a fully operational business, the Raspberry Pi foundation will remain a not-for-profit, Upton said.
  • Around 10,000 units should be available once or twice a month. There's an upper limit of about 100,000 that the Raspberry Pi foundation can produce in a year, though.
And here's the full interview:

BUSINESS INSIDER: Why did you guys want to build such a cheap computer?

Eben Upton: We came up with the idea because we'd been interviewing potential undergraduates to come to Cambridge university about 5 years ago. Both the number of people applying and the stuff you could have relied on them already done was getting worse. The numbers were going down and could hardly rely on the people you did get to know anything about computers.

We looked around for reasons why this happened. The thing that came to me, the people of my generation had small computers when they were kids. They had TRSATs, they had these machines and they were programmable. You turn them on and the first thing you could do was print "hello world." These are going away and have been replaced by game consoles or PCs, which are programmable. 

I started looking for a way you could provide a machine cheaply enough that you could give you children, settling on this $25, $35 price point. Over the last 5 years, we've been looking at ways for making a machine like this. I joined Broadcom and it turns out Broadcom made chips that ware really cheap. You could build a pretty respectable computer at the $25 point and the foundation is really an organization that brings out the possibilities of this.

Now you've got a chip that can meet the price point, the foundation is a way to do that.

BI: So it's a shot at getting kids to learn how to program? 

EU: Yeah, they're so cheap you can give them to all the children or they can buy them like they buy textbooks. That's the idea, children are enormously illiterate now, but what they know how to do is use computers. They see them as bits as functional magic and have no idea how they work. That's fine for Facebook and browsing, but if you want a career out of this stuff or create something that's high value, you have to understand how the thing works

This is almost nationalist. We were concerned about Cambridge's problem and the university's problem of getting enough qualified students. Then we were concerned about Britain's problem, not producing enough engineering graduates. It was a quite parochial initial view we had. AS soon as news got out that we were going to do this, most of the interest we saw was in the undeveloped world. Russia and Brazil, a lot of people very interested in this.

The project has broadened out from this educational thing to adult hobbyists. A lot of the biggest cheerleaders are guys my age who want to build robots and media centers. Also people in the developed world where you can get performance out of places with televisions but not computers. It turns your TV into a workable productivity computer.

pq2 raspberry

BI: Why show off the video game performance of it, then?

EU: I guess what we tried to do, we showed you running a web browser, a piece of productivity software. We wanted to emphasize everything the chip can do. It's a maddeningly powerful process, it will run a desktop. It won't set the world on fire with its desktop performance, but it has a lot of multimedia performance. It can do 1080p HD video playback. We wanted to put out a series of videos capturing it doing these things that surprise people at that price point. 

BI: Do you guys ever plan to make money? Or turn this into a business? 

EU: There is no corporate organization. The Raspberry Pi foundation has six trustees, I'm the executive director of the foundation. The foundation owns all the intellectual property embodied in the device and is the business entity procuring the manufacturing and handling distribution. It's a limited company under English company law. It's possible to take a company like that and register it as a charity. The company is registered as a not-for-profit. 

The money you get is recycled back into the business. The bearers of the trustees have given loads of money to the foundation. That provides the working capital required to pay for chip infantry. The primary limit on our scale is the working capital to hold our infantry and buffer it as it runs through the company, we have pretty insignificant fixed overheads.

We've raised capital in 10,000 unit batches to build the devices. That's the money we need, that will provide us, but there's an upper limit to how many devices you can build in a year at that rate. With best use of working capital you can build 100,000 devices each year, to scale we'll have to raise additional capital. We're intending to release the designs for the device at due cost. We can't make any money out of this, we have no incentive to keep the design of the device secret.

We do hope third parties will be able to manufacture clones. We can expand the concept without having to expand the capital base.

BI: Does that mean you guys are planning on releasing a second version? 

EU: We're comfortable with our multimedia performance, we do realize our ARM performance is kind of retro. 700MHz is enough, but it could be more, but we don't currently have any plans for a successor.

Obviously we're careful not to speculate. We'll see how this one goes. The history is full of computer companies that have imagined the next product and talked about it and then people have fallen out of sway. There are no concrete plans. Look at Apple, it's a company that I really admire in a lot of ways and they are extremely good at controlling information and their image. We're going to do that.

BI: So when are you taking reservations for the device? 

EU: We actually haven't taken pre-orders. We built an initial prototype batch, alpha boards, we've had those for several months. We've built a very short run of the final device, a test run to make sure the design is sound. It does appear to be sound, we found one small design defect, it's a five minute fix and we've fixed that now. We're in the process of committing a manufacturing run. We've bought parts for 10,000 devices and we are in the process of committing a manufacturing run for that.

When those devices come back in a few weeks time, we have a web store that we'll turn on. We'll turn the storefront on with a few thousand devices for sale. I suspect it's gonna take an hour to sell through it at that point, I'm going to hold a few hundred in reserve. We have developers we've committed priority devices to. 

We've been unusual in not taking pre-orders, a lot of people try to fund the capital requirements of the project by taking pre-orders. I think we could do that, but it's always felt very risky to me. It creates the risk of, if something goes wrong, we're going to end up having defrauded a lot of people a lot of money. Even now, with a workable device, we're still very careful about not taking people's money until we have a physical device in our hands.

BI: How often do you expect to have Raspberry Pi computers available?

EU: I suspect we can do a batch slightly more than once a month. Looking at the supply chain, it will require some careful planning to do that within our capital requirement. I think that's pretty achievable. The aim very early on is to get these designs into the hands of the parties. We would like nothing more than some company in China to make a million of these. It would be perfect, we would achieve our goal, which is ubiquitous presence of cheap computers without having all the requirements of doing capital raising to scale. 

Fingers crossed. I hope that'll be in the first half of next year, clones will be a factor.

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drag2share: Intel's 32nm Medfield SoC specs and benchmarks leak

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/12/27/intels-32nm-medfield-soc-specs-and-benchmarks-leak/

Medfield
Intel's Medfield may still be a ways from breaking into the smartphone and tablet market, but we're finally starting to get some concrete details on its specs and capabilities. VR-Zone got the bitty gritty on Chipzilla's first true SoC and it looks almost ready to run with the big dogs. A reference tablet, running at 1.6GHz with 1GB of RAM (which also packs Bluetooth, WiFi and FM radio) was put through some Android benchmarks and held it's own against a Tegra 2 and a Snapdragon MSM8260 -- which pulled a 7,500 and 8,000 in Caffeinemark 3, respectively. The admittedly higher clocked Atom scored an impressive 10,500, though, power consumption on the pre-production chips was a bit higher than anticipated. At idle the fledgling Medfield was sucking down 2.6W and spiking to 3.6W under load. Ultimately Intel hopes to cut those numbers to 2W at idle and 2.6W while pushing out HD video -- not far off from current-gen ARM SoC. Lets not forget though, benchmarks only tell part of the story -- we'll be waiting to see working hardware before declaring a victor.

Intel's 32nm Medfield SoC specs and benchmarks leak originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 27 Dec 2011 16:04:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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drag2share: Army of MetroPCS phones heading to Amazon's virtual shelves

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/12/27/army-of-metropcs-phones-heading-to-amazons-virtual-shelves/

MetroPCS purports to bring the wireless to all, but it hasn't had the right showcase to fulfill that promise... until now. The carrier announced today that its arsenal of handsets is on the way to one of the biggest online retailers in the world. A quick perusal of the PR below reveals no handset exclusions, so it's safe to say that Amazon will offer every handset from the mobile provider's armory. We know that cash Santa stuffed in your stocking's burning a hole in your pocket, and right now seems like a good time to head on over to Bezos' favorite site to get your hands on one of those LTE devices we've introduced you to.

Continue reading Army of MetroPCS phones heading to Amazon's virtual shelves

Army of MetroPCS phones heading to Amazon's virtual shelves originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 27 Dec 2011 22:15:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Tuesday, December 27, 2011

drag2share: Airtight brings Apple's Airplay to your Google TV, makes Cupertino and Mountain View play nice

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/12/27/airtight-brings-apples-airplay-to-your-google-tv-makes-cuperti/

Airtight
We've seen Airplay work its way into Android phones thanks to apps before, but what if you to reverse the equation? What if you want to stream not from, but to a desert-flavored player. Well, it's little more than a proof of concept at the moment, but Airtight does just that -- turns your Google TV into an Airplay-compatible receiver. You'll obviously have to be running the latest OS update to enable Market access, and the you'll pay $0.99 for the privilege of tinkering with the still rather rough app. For the moment there is no support for streaming music (only videos), anything with DRM is wont play and mirroring is but a dream. But, it works, and that's all that matters... right? Hit up the source link for more details and to purchase it now.

Airtight brings Apple's Airplay to your Google TV, makes Cupertino and Mountain View play nice originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 27 Dec 2011 19:42:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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drag2share: LG unveils new 3D glasses, hopes lighter and better looking spectacles drive adoption

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/12/26/lg-unveils-new-3d-glasses-hopes-lighter-and-better-looking-spec/

LG's FPR 3DTVs already featured lighter, cheaper passive 3D glasses than their active shutter competition, but next year the company will push its advantage even further with these new models. The three options available include the F310 (at right, above) which it says weighs 20 percent less than last year's default and are curved more for a better fit, the F320 (left) clip-on design for glasses-wearers and Alain Mikli-designed (the guy who made Kanye's shutter shades, among other high-end eyeglasses) F360 half-rim frames (middle). It also rolled out a press release trumpeting new Smart TV features for 2012, but beyond the updated remote and confirmation of Intel WiDi integration, it's pretty short on details. We're not seeing any Google TV tie-ins here, LG is focusing on its homegrown ecosystem which it says now offers 1,200 apps (of course, that probably includes the thousand or so recently added via its deal with Chumby). There's no word on pricing for the glasses, but after this and announcing a 55-inch OLED prototype, we're wondering what else the Lucky Goldstar folks will have up their sleeves at CES.

Continue reading LG unveils new 3D glasses, hopes lighter and better looking spectacles drive adoption

LG unveils new 3D glasses, hopes lighter and better looking spectacles drive adoption originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 26 Dec 2011 21:13:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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drag2share: JXD releases S7100 Android-based gaming tablet, manages to steal from everyone

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/12/27/jxd-releases-s7100-android-based-gaming-tablet-manages-to-steal/

If you're going to steal, steal from the best. JXD has just released its S7100, a fairly conspicuous 7-inch Android-powered gaming tablet marketed towards playing old-school arcade games. The device features a D-pad, face buttons, an 800 x 480 capacitive touchsceen, ARM Cortex A9 CPU, Mali 400 GPU, 512MB of RAM, 16GB of internal storage, 0.3 megapixel front camera, 2.0 megapixel rear camera and HDMI-out. A video trailer shows the unit playing a variety of touchscreen games and classic ROMs including Metal Slug, Mario Kart 64, Angry Birds, Plants Vs. Zombies and Fruit Ninja HD. Not to be undone, the device also features the actual PlayStation button icons on its own buttons (sound familiar?), while the marketing website for the device sports icons from Apple, Google, Microsoft and others. If you're thus far undeterred, there's a must-watch promotional vid hosted just after the break -- nothing justifies a $140 price tag like Bieber, right?

Continue reading JXD releases S7100 Android-based gaming tablet, manages to steal from everyone

JXD releases S7100 Android-based gaming tablet, manages to steal from everyone originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 27 Dec 2011 00:54:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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drag2share: NTT Docomo, Panasonic, Samsung and more team up to take on Qualcomm over cellphone chips

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/12/27/ntt-docomo-panasonic-samsung-and-more-team-up-to-take-on-qualc/

Japanese mobile operator NTT Docomo just announced it's forming a joint venture with five partners -- Samsung, Panasonic, Fujitsu Limited, Fujitsu Semiconductor and NEC -- to develop and sell chips for mobile devices. According to the press release the fabless JV will get started once all involved finish hammering out the details and focus on creating LTE-connected products for the global market. NTT Docomo is investing $5.8 million to create a subsidiary, Communication Platform Planning Co., in preparation with one of its executives as CEO. Currently Qualcomm makes the majority of chips found in smartphones, but it appears to have some high-powered competition on the way soon.

Continue reading NTT Docomo, Panasonic, Samsung and more team up to take on Qualcomm over cellphone chips

NTT Docomo, Panasonic, Samsung and more team up to take on Qualcomm over cellphone chips originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 27 Dec 2011 02:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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drag2share: Drone Station lets you pilot an AR.Drone with your Mac

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/12/27/drone-station-lets-you-pilot-an-ar-drone-with-your-mac/

Drone Station for Mac
Drone Station won't actually have you tilting your MacBook to pilot the recreational quadrocopter around your hood but, when neither the little, small, wee smartphone nor the great, huge Surface will do -- a mid-sized laptop may be just right. The on screen HUD displays all the information you'll need to accurately fly the AR.Drone and the app is compatible with a broad array of external controllers, including the Wii Nunchuk and Balance Board. While you're using a game pad to soar through the sky, your computer can actually record video from the UAV's on-board cameras, so you can document your hijinks or perform some reconnaissance on that shady neighbor kid. Hit up the source link for more info and check out the Mac App Store to download it now for $10.

Drone Station lets you pilot an AR.Drone with your Mac originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 27 Dec 2011 04:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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drag2share: ASUS Eee PC 1225B proves netbooks will still be kicking around in 2012

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/12/27/asus-eee-pc-1225b-proves-netbooks-will-still-be-kicking-around-i/

The death of the netbook has been greatly exaggerated -- at least that's what ASUS is praying holds true for next year. Its latest addition, the Eee PC 1225B, refreshes the spec sheet seen on the 1215B. You'll find it's still based on AMD's Brazos chipset -- thus the B -- and will apparently arrive on two different gear speeds; one with an AMD C60 dual-core 1GHz processor and another toting AMD's dual-core 1.65GHz E450 APU. Up to 4GBs of DDR3 RAM and storage options starting at 320GB should ensure a respectable bang for your buck. On top of that, there's an 11.6-inch 1,366 x 768 display, integrated webcam, a smattering of USB ports (both 2.0 and 3.0) and the same VGA and HDMI outputs found on its predecessor. Notebook Italia reckons that these new netbooks will start at €349 ($455). If you're not ready just yet for the heady specs (and prices) of an Ultrabook, you can visit ASUS' official site at the source for the full spec breakdown.

[Thanks Marco]

ASUS Eee PC 1225B proves netbooks will still be kicking around in 2012 originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 27 Dec 2011 08:44:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Monday, December 26, 2011

drag2share: T-Platforms to build ten petaflop supercomputer for Moscow State University

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/12/26/t-platforms-to-build-ten-petaflop-supercomputer-for-moscow-state/

In post-Soviet Russia, massive supercomputer programs you. (Sorry, we had to.) Recently, Russia's Moscow State University contracted with high-performance computing company T-Platforms to create a ten petaflop cluster that'll be operational in 2013. The computer would fall just short of the fastest supercomputer on Earth (the Japanese K Computer, which is rated at 10.51 petaflops) and will incorporate a mixture of different node types to achieve the ten petaflops. T-Platforms will reportedly build the nodes from Sandy Bridge or Ivy Bridge Xeon processors and NVIDIA's next-generation Kepler GPU coprocessors, and Intel's Many Integrated Core (MIC) architecture could also be included if it's available during construction. The reason for the project? Unknown officially, but we're guessing it's just another reason for Putin to rip his shirt off and celebrate.

Continue reading T-Platforms to build ten petaflop supercomputer for Moscow State University

T-Platforms to build ten petaflop supercomputer for Moscow State University originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 26 Dec 2011 19:48:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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drag2share: The Story of the Most Successful Man/Woman/??? on Reddit [In Profile]

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5870091/the-story-of-the-most-successful-manwoman-on-reddit

The Story of the Most Successful Man/Woman/??? on RedditA couple weeks ago, Mat Honan wrote about the most viral people on the Internet. At the top of that list was Maxwellhill, the first and only Reddit user to achieve 1 Million link karma points—link karma is the unit of measure of a Redditor's story-selection.

It's a hell of an achievement, and everyone at Giz was curious about how Maxwellhill made it happen. So when I got an email from the Mysterious Max, I asked. Lucky for us, he answered. Or maybe she answered? The amazing thing about the emails we've been trading back and forth is that Maxwellhill has revealed almost no personal details.

That's actually awesome. The magic of anonymized Internet identity is that Maxwellhill could be anyone. Your drinking buddy. Your business partner. Your math teacher. Your math student. Your cab driver or car salesman or senator. Using the cloak of the Internet as a disguise, Maxwellhill flits in and out of our lives as a superhero would. Only instead of saving a mass of screaming citizens from an out-of-control train, s/he protects our daily lives from boredom with a steady stream of well-selected content from around the Net.

From what I can tell, though, Maxwellhill isn't just trying to be mysterious; he/she is trying to be successful. Maxwellhill's ascent to power was deliberate and skillful. The million karma points were a goal, not an accident. It's a powerful lesson in the user-driven Internet, and it's counter-intuitive one as well: Take the person out of the equation and become a platform.

What follows is everything the top Redditor is willing to share about his or her online life—a primer on reddit success and a very interesting story. In his own words. Or her own words? Who knows. -JB

I started almost 6 years ago—when reddit was still run by its co-founders, Alexis and Steve—more out of curiosity than anything else. There were a few social websites such as digg, but most of them were merely news aggregators. As I played around with social news, I realized that content providers were always going to do better than commenters because they need only provide one good link (a "platform") for hundreds to comment.

At that time there were about 10 key redditors whose links constantly made the front page. I wasn't one of them. In fact, it was really tough just to get my first 100 karma points—it took months! When I finally managed to get a few links on the front page, I followed what they did and posted anything that I felt was interesting. But I avoided politics.

Then the top five redditors left to work for Jason Calcanis and AOL, paid to provide content [Ed: These people were called "Netscape Navigators", and, along with the top users from digg, Flickr, and Newsvine, collected $1,000 a month to scour the Web for good stories.]. Being the least experienced of the top 10, I wasn't selected. I think the experiment failed, though, because Jason soon left to start his own company.

I saw an opportunity in the hole left behind by the top five, so I decided to focus my energy on becoming number one on reddit. I focused on building a reputation for quality links with a style of my own: I avoided pics, jokes, and comics if at all possible; I focused on well-written articles from reputable sources. I would change the title to reflect the gist of the article, but I would never editorialize it. (Otherwise I would appear biased, and could alienate a general audience.) Sometimes I had to make the title interesting, but I would never distort the story or be misleading. I would not comment on my own submissions either; I stayed strictly a content provider, sticking to the "platform" approach I had identified early on.

It was incredibly time-consuming, especially as I started moderating subreddits. The advent of subreddits was great because they allowed me to hone in on a particular audience, but between digging up links and moderating, I was stretched thin. I just didn't have room to read and comment as much as I would like. (Hence my dismal comment karma.) I had to focus again, so I concentrated my energy on some of the bigger subreddits. qgyh2 and I were responsible for taking r/worldnews from the pits to one of the top 5 subreddits—and one of the handful with over a million subscribers.

The last few months, as I was fast approaching a million karma points, I decided on a target date of the end of the year and doubled my efforts on submissions—but not on moderating. Having achieved that million a few weeks ahead of schedule, I deided to take a break. These days, I spend about 3-4 hours a day on Reddit. I am also busy with a potential business venture that is taking a large part of my time, but I try to squeeze in the odd link when I have the time...


Illustration by Reddit co-founder and original Alien doodler Alexis Ohanian. Fun fact: It's the first one he's ever drawn in profile. He says it was hard. Thanks Alexis!

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drag2share: Sony sells its stake in Samsung LCD team-up for $939 million

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/12/26/sony-sells-its-stake-in-samsung-lcd-team-up-for-939-million/

Sony and Samsung have decided to part ways on their seven-year-old LCD venture. Possibly due to Sony's recent struggles in the increasingly competitive world of TV division, Samsung will buy up its 50 percent share for around $939 million. The Japanese company has agreed to a new strategic agreement to source Sammy's LCDs in the future and, according to Sony, will continue "cooperative engineering efforts focused on LCD panel technology." Its full explanation follows after the break.

Continue reading Sony sells its stake in Samsung LCD team-up for $939 million

Sony sells its stake in Samsung LCD team-up for $939 million originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 26 Dec 2011 01:52:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sunday, December 25, 2011

drag2share: Swype gets a new beta, adopts Dragon Dictation for speech to text (video)

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/12/25/swype-gets-a-new-beta-adopts-dragon-dictation-for-speech-to-tex/

Swype Beta
Look, either you love or hate Swype -- there's just no two ways about it. Those that can't imagine life without the gesture-based virtual keyboard will probably only fall deeper in amour with it when greeted with the latest beta. Eagle-eyed observers might notice the microphone key in that image above has been replaced with a tiny flame logo that should be familiar to any fan of Nuance's voice-to-text apps. Swype now has Dragon Dictation baked right in -- a development we could have guessed was coming after the October buy out. Check out the epic video after the break for a few more details.

Continue reading Swype gets a new beta, adopts Dragon Dictation for speech to text (video)

Swype gets a new beta, adopts Dragon Dictation for speech to text (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 25 Dec 2011 12:55:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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