DIY SSD adapter takes 6 SDHC cards, the cake
Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/361888115/
Filed under: Storage
Monday, August 11, 2008
Indilinx trumpets SSD controller with 230MB/sec read speed
Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/362037340/
Filed under: Storage
With SSDs, there really is no "fast enough." In the never-ending quest for more speed, Indilinx has just introduced its Barefoot solid state drive controller with 90-nanometer process technology. Said device has reportedly shown the "fastest read speed (230MB/sec) of all the products currently available in the market and supports the capacity up to 512GB with multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash." Additionally, it plays nice with SATA 2.0 and flash memory from Samsung, Toshiba, Hynix and Intel / Micron. Sadly, mass production isn't scheduled until Q4 of this year, so now you can sit on that vanilla HDD even longer as you wait for the future to arrive. Ugh, what a tease.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments 
VIA ditches motherboard business, focuses on processors
Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/362073948/
Filed under: Desktops, Laptops
It looks like VIA has finally had enough of the schoolyard fights with Intel and tauntings with hair dyers, as it has just dropped word over the weekend that it's quitting the motherboard chipset business in order to focus on processors and chipsets for motherboards that use its own Nano CPU. According to Custom PC, this is actually a move that VIA had seen coming all along, with vice president of corporate marketing saying that, "one of the main reasons we originally moved into the x86 processor business was because we believed that ultimately the third party chipset market would disappear." Of course, that also means that VIA is putting most of its "chips" in one basket (yes, we said it) and, as Slashdot points out, it leaves other third-party chip manufacturers like SiS with some tough questions to ask themselves.[Via Slashdot]Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
HTC Touch Pro hands-on
Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/362298910/
Filed under: Cellphones
Permalink | Email this | Comments
Month's Top 10 Most-Liked, Most-Recalled New TV Spots
Nielsen IAG Research Ad Ratings: Consumers Like Dove's Model Ad
| NIELSEN IAG TOP 10 MOST-LIKED NEW TV ADS June 23 - July 20, 2008 | ||||||
Dove continues its conversation regarding beauty and self-esteem in the face of commercial exploitation. In this spot, which was the commercial most liked by viewers during the last month, a young girl is bombarded with visuals of tone, buff, scantily clad women. Dove goes on to describe the self-esteem workshops it has formed to educate young girls about notions of beauty. | ||||||
| Rank | Brand | Description | Index | |||
| 1 | Dove | Girls are under more pressure than ever; images of models flash by little girl's face; sits alone; goes to self-esteem workshop. | 154 | |||
| 2 | Burger King | Steakhouse--Man asks other men what they did to deserve a burger; one discovered a new planet, the other man helped. | 147 | |||
| 3 | Capital One | Card Lab--Sea captain designs his own credit card while a giant squid attacks his submarine; card features picture of his pet. | 141 | |||
| 4 | Target | Boy scouts with huge marshmallows and Hershey's bars; More joy, Less jingle; More quench, Less coin; More pretty, Less penny. | 136 | |||
| 5 | Hyundai | Dollars & Sense Sales Event--There's never been a better time to do something completely sensible with your money; up to $2,000 cash back. | 133 | |||
| 6 | Hyundai | Dollars & Sense Sales Event--Now is a great time to do something smart with your money; great fuel economy; up to $3,500 cash back. | 129 | |||
| 7 | AT&T | FamilyTalk with Rollover--Man spills milk on his minutes and throws them out; wife says they're rollover minutes; sister loses her old minutes. | 127 | |||
| 8 | Chili's | Create Your Own Fajitas--People in an office play musical chairs while on a conference call; trying to create your own fun?; welcome to Chili's. | 122 | |||
| 9 | Hyundai | Dollars & Sense Sales Event--Author talks about investing to end up with buckets of money; man opens car door and money falls out. | 119 | |||
| 10 | Allstate | Dennis Haysbert in supermarket; if this isn't a recession, it sure feels like one; other companies have skimped on coverage to get the price down. | 117 | |||
| Source: Nielsen IAG (iagr.net) Only new ad executions considered, airing weeks of June 23 to July 20, 2008. The Likeability Score is the percentage of TV viewers who report to like "a lot" an ad they were exposed to during the normal course of viewing TV (among those recalling the brand of the ad). These scores are then indexed against the mean score for all new ads during the period (Likeability Index). 100 equals average. For example, with a Likeability index of 154 the top ranked Dove spot has proven to 54% better-liked than the average new commercial during the past four-week period. | ||||||
| NIELSEN IAG TOP 10 MOST-RECALLED NEW TV ADS June 23 - July 20, 2008 | ||||||
| Rank | Brand | Description | Index | |||
| 1 | Dannon | Activia Challenge--Women at pool; one woman doesn't want to swim because she is irregular; Jamie Lee Curtis says Activia works or it's free (:30). | 195 | |||
| 2 | Kraft | Macaroni & Cheese Crackers--Kids eat and are lifted by cheese geysers; kid by pool; kids at lunch; blast of the cheesiest in every bite. | 191 | |||
| 3 | Capital One | Card Lab--Butler says mankind needs you; Armadillo superhero says mankind can wait, designs card instead; decorates card with family picture. | 183 | |||
| 4 | Coca-Cola | John Pemberton created Coca-Cola in 1886; bottles from different eras are shown on a white background; best ingredients for secret formula. | 181 | |||
| 5 | Lowe's | Squeaky door tells man to "paint me" as his wife reads a Lowe's circular; Lowe's has new lower prices all over the store. | 179 | |||
| 6 | Dannon | Activia Challenge--Women at pool; one woman doesn't want to swim because she is irregular; Jamie Lee Curtis says Activia works or it's free (:15). | 174 | |||
| 7 | DirecTV | Robert Patrick from Terminator 2 bursts into helicopter; says he's not here to terminate John Connor, just wants to watch his DirecTV (:15). | 171 | |||
| 8 | Verizon Wireless | Two spooky boys warn a man that the laundry room is a dead zone; he's not worried because he has the Verizon network. | 170 | |||
| 9 | DirecTV | Robert Patrick from Terminator 2 bursts into helicopter; says he's not here to terminate John Connor, just wants to watch his DirecTV (:30). | 166 | |||
| 10 | AT&T | FamilyTalk with Rollover--Man spills milk on his minutes and throws them out; wife says they're rollover minutes; sister loses her old minutes. | 161 | |||
| Source: Nielsen IAG (iagr.net) Only new ad executions considered, airing weeks of June 23 to July 20, 2008. The Recall Score is the percentage of TV viewers who can recall within 24 hours the brand of an ad they were exposed to during the normal course of viewing TV. These scores are then indexed against the mean score for all new ads during the period (Recall Index). 100 equals average. For example, with a recall index of 195 the top ranked Dannon spot has proven nearly twice as memorable as the average new commercial during the past four-week period. | ||||||
Export Photos from Flickr to your Computer with flump
Source: http://www.labnol.org/internet/pictures/export-flickr-photos/4174/
You supply a Flickr ID (it could be your own or someone else’s) and the tool will download all the public photos from that Flickr account to your hard drive.
flump downloads the original images but only if the Flickr account owner has set their account permissions to allow the original images to be downloaded.
The app was originally developed by Mike Chambers and Lee Brimelow of Adobe and the full source is now available on Google code.
Related: Download Flickr Pictures in a Batch
Export Photos from Flickr to your Computer with flump - Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal
Announcing Winners of the SnagIt 9 Challenge
Source: http://www.labnol.org/software/snagit-challenge-winners/4179/
Here are the 10 winning entries (out of 92) who get a copy of SnagIt 9 courtesy Betsy.
1. Fer Vazquez: Even with the option to capture mouse pointer enabled, it is impossible to capture the pointer trail (once this is enabled too!)
2. Prakash: You cannot take a screenshot of taking screenshot.
3. Michael Markuson: Snagit can not capture the screen that appears after pressing pressing Ctrl Alt Delete.
4. William Baer: Quite simply, active screen savers cannot be saved with screen capture software because as soon as you would define the area and try to capture it, your activity shuts off the screen saver.
5. Gaurav: You cannot capture Windows Vista's UAC prompts with SnagIt because it uses Secure Desktop mode.
6. Michael Bazzoni: I do tons of screen captures but the only thing I found that I cannot capture is a UAC prompted message in Windows Vista. The only way I could get this is via digital camera.
7. Sid: I wish we could capture the screen when they hang - or the Blue Screen — to send to IT for debug.
8. Ross: The BIOS.
9. Akshay Jain: You cannot capture Google Talk conversation in "SCROLL" mode with Snagit. I have been using Snagit and other screenshot programs but they fail to auto-scroll the gtalk chat window.
10. Haim: Can I capture a Blue Screen of Death (BSoD).
Your registration codes have already been dispatched. Meanwhile, you can read some SnagIt Tips or this detailed review of SnagIt 9.
Announcing Winners of the SnagIt 9 Challenge - Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal
The Most Popular Social Bookmarking Services
Source: http://www.labnol.org/internet/most-popular-social-bookmarking-services/4191/
Email continues to be the most favorite mode for sharing links on the Internet followed by Facebook and Digg though its a formidable lead.
These statistics are provided by ShareThis and if you compare these numbers with what AddThis provided an year ago, you’ll see an interesting trend:
1. More people prefer sharing links on social networking sites like Facebook or MySpace rather than the regular social bookmarking services like delicious.
2. Windows Live is gaining ground and appears almost as popular as Google Bookmarks. The gap was very wide last year.
3. Don’t discount Technorati yet. It looks like lot of people do add blogs / websites to their "Technorati Favorites" and it’s more popular than say Diigo, ma.gnolia.com or Mixx.com.
Also see: Most Useful Blog Add-Ons
The Most Popular Social Bookmarking Services - Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal
iPhone 2.0 Jailbreak Apps You Can't Find in the iTunes Store [IPhone 2.0 Jailbreak]
The iTunes' App Store offers iPhone and iPod touch users hundreds of applications to install on their devices, but power users who want functionality above and beyond what Apple's SDK allows still want to jailbreak their device. Now that jailbreak developers have had a full month to work on applications for jailbroken iPhone 2.0 users, there's a bigger selection than ever of jailbreak 2.0 software that lets you do things App Store offerings don't. Let's look at a few of the good ones.
Note: Most of the iPhone 2.0 jailbreak offerings are geared toward the developer and power user. If you're not sure whether or not you want to take the plunge and jailbreak, hopefully this post will give you an idea of whether or not it's worth it for you.
MxTube Downloads YouTube Clips to Your Device (Cydia)
When you've got a favorite YouTube clip you want to show all your friends—but don't want to wait for it to download over the air—MxTube comes to the rescue. MxTube can download and save YouTube clips to your jailbroken device for watching when you're offline, out of Wi-Fi range, or just using the slow Edge network. Great especially for iPod touch users without a data connection. (Original post.) Click to view MxTube's search interface, with options to stream the clip as usual, or download to your device.
BiteSMS Offers Cheaper Text Messaging (Cydia)
BiteSMS is a text messaging service that offers an alternative to AT&T or your iPhone's SMS carrier. Buy text messaging credits at BiteSMS.com (currently 10 cents per message, less if you buy more) and install the BiteSMS app via Cydia on your jailbroken device. Then, to send messages using BiteSMS instead of your plan, choose it near the Send button, as shown. (Click the image to see a full-sized version of what sending a text message with BiteSMS looks like.) The BiteSMS app keeps track of how many messages you send via your default carrier, and how many BiteSMS credits you have left, so you can decide which is the most economical way to send a message.
Here are detailed instructions for installing BiteSMS via Cydia; you'll have to purchase credits at BiteSMS.com to start using it as an alternative to your SMS carrier.
Bo! ssPrefs Removes Icons You Don't Want (Cydia)
While you can remove bookmarks and other app icons from your device by just tapping and holding, then hitting the X icon on them, some icons are absolutely fixed on your iPhone or iPod touch—whether or not you use them. Install BossPrefs via Cydia to get extra options for configuring your device, including "Poof!" a section where you can disable icons—even fixed ones like iTunes or Stocks. Click on the image to see a full-size view of Poof, inside BossPrefs.
WebSearch Customizable, One-Tap Search Launcher (Cydia)
This is the app that got me to jailbreak my iPhone pre-2.0: a quick tap way to search common engines beyond Google, like Wikipedia, IMDB, and even Lifehacker. Adam named this an app worth jailbreaking for pre-iPhone 2.0, and it still ranks right there even now. (Not sure why this app isn't available via the App Store; let us know in the comments if you've found an equivalent there.)
Click on the image to see a WebSearch quickly query Wikipedia search in action full-size.
gTxtEdit is an Actual Text Editor (Installer.app)
If you want to store your notes in actual plain text files—instead of the BS built-in Notes application—you want gTxtEdit. Granted, gTxtEdit doesn't offer a file browser for easy loading and saving of files, and to get your .txt files off the phone you need to SCP in (with OpenSSH, see more below), so it's not the most user-friendly of apps. But plain text lovers not afraid of the command line will dig it. (Also, the developer promises that an actual file browser is forthcoming.) Click on the image to see a text file in gTxtEdit. Customize App Skins Your Device (Cydia)
Users who really want to trick out their device want to put a good-looking skin on it. Using the Customize app, you can browse, preview, and download custom skins, and apply the whole skin to your device or just parts of it. Here are a few skins you can find there. Click each image below to see it full-size.
 |  |  |  |
From left to right the skins shown above are: AlienwareTheme, Leopard, SketchedOut, and Stickers. (Be warned: I had some trouble applying some skins I tried out, like Alienware. To activate a skin, on the skin page, after you choose "Apply Theme to Device," head back to the Customize main menu and choose "Exit & Restart Springboard.")
quake4iphone (Cydia)
This one's pretty self-explanatory. It's Quake! On the iPhone!
OpenSSH Gives You Full Root Access to Your Device
We've been over this a million times already, but an article like this can't go without saying: Getting SFTP (or SCP) access to your device means you can move files back and forth from it. This lets you copy voicemail or music files from the device to your computer, transfer NES emulator ROMs to play on your device, access the text files you're editing with gTxtEdit, and get your computer online using your iPhone's data connection. You can even do nutty stuff like transfer your Notes and SMS messages back to your computer for saving and archiving with OpenSSH installed.
Of course, the previously mentioned Mobile Terminal and the NES emulator are also top picks for jailbroken iPhone 2.0 apps. The very promising SynchStep—an app that purports to switch the song playing on your iPod to your pace using the device's motion detection—didn't do as well as we hoped in tests. (But the concept is super-cool, and we hope the developer will work out the screen lock kink soon.)
What are your favorite jailbreak 2.0 apps, skins, add-ons, and tweaks? Let us know in the comments.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
