Dr. Augustine Fou's Online Scrapbook

Sunday, May 30, 2010

Qik two-way video calling on the Sprint EVO 4G is free, premium service is not

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/29/qik-two-way-video-calling-on-the-sprint-evo-4g-is-free-premium/

Qik has lived up to its name in clarifying some leaks indicating that future EVO 4G owners on Sprint will be charged $5 a month to make use of its video chat services. As it turns out, that subscription fee will be for a new range of "advanced premium features," which will be elucidated on June 4 alongside the EVO's retail launch. The core two-way video calling will come absolutely free, we're promised, and only those yearning for extra features will have to pay up. It seems clear from the wording of that statement that multi-party conversations will figure prominently in the premium set, though we're left guessing at what other ways Qik has for seducing us to part with our cash. Either way, good news if you wanted to keep things simple... and cheap.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Qik two-way video calling on the Sprint EVO 4G is free, premium service is not originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 29 May 2010 11:20:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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iPhone 4G display put under a microscope, 960 x 640 a lock?

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/29/iphone-4g-put-under-a-microscope-960-x-640-looks-like-a-lock/

You've seen it in San Jose, you've seen plenty of it in Vietnam, and now, apparently, you're seeing the iPhone 4G display waving at you from the center of Europe, namely the Czech Republic. We haven't been able to corroborate that these fellas do indeed have a legitimate next-gen iPhone part in their paws, but hey, that's what they claim. The guys from superiphone.cz have gone above and beyond the leaker's call of duty, by taking the supposed next-gen screen under a microscope and figuring out its pixel density and display technology. According to them, the new iPhone will sport an IPS panel, much like the other handheld device Apple introduced this year, with a cool 960 x 640 resolution. This quadruples the total number of pixels from the iPhone 3GS -- making rescaling of current apps a straightforward affair -- while also giving Apple the right to claim the highest pixel density yet seen on a phone. You'll find similarly zoomed-in pics of the Nexus One and iPod touch screens at the source, and the answers to all your iPhone-related questions at WWDC in a few days' time.

iPhone 4G display put under a microscope, 960 x 640 a lock? originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 29 May 2010 13:54:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Dell Streak's Gorilla Glass screen: torture tested for your amusement (video)

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/29/dell-streaks-gorilla-glass-screen-torture-tested-for-your-amus/

So we've been hearing rumors about the Dell Streak being some kind of a rugged bad boy. Word is, the Gorilla Glass display on this 5-inch slate is good enough to withstand pretty much anything a human would care to throw its way. Them's fighting words where we come from, so we did the only thing a responsible tech blog can do -- we put them to the test. Should you be brave enough to follow us after the break, you'll come upon our best efforts to destroy our own Streak prototype, albeit with little success. Then again, the end result might be less important than the journey there, which is not to be missed.

Continue reading Dell Streak's Gorilla Glass screen: torture tested for your amusement (video)

Dell Streak's Gorilla Glass screen: torture tested for your amusement (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 29 May 2010 15:10:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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New Skype 2.0 app for the iPhone allows voice calls over 3G

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/29/new-skype-2-0-app-for-the-iphone-allows-voice-calls-over-3g/

Plenty of other VoIP apps have managed to work in this functionality since Apple / AT&T started allowing it last year, but the official Skype app has been a notable holdout. Now, two months after Skype started doing 3G calls on Android with Verizon, there's a 2.0 version of the app for iPhone that brings voice calls over 3G at last. Mobile iPhone calls are free until August, after which you'll need a "mobile subscription." We're testing out the app as we write this and it seems to work about as well any other 3G VoIP app we've tried: passable, not revolutionary.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

New Skype 2.0 app for the iPhone allows voice calls over 3G originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 29 May 2010 17:35:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Samsung develops USB-powered desktop PC monitor, plans 2011 street date

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/29/samsung-develops-usb-powered-desktop-pc-monitor-plans-2011-stre/

We've seen more than our fair share of USB displays as of late, and on the whole they're usually tiny -- say, around 7-inches. Sure, they're well-suited for someone who wants to get that Tweetdeck or their IRC window off of their main desktop, but that's about it. It looks like Samsung's poised to take the whole affair to the next level with its new 18.5-inch LCD display. By "improving the transmittance of the panel and the luminance efficiency of the backlight," Tech-on! notes, the company was able to keep power consumption down to 6.3W -- low enough that a forked USB 2.0 cable is sufficient to power the thing as well as supply data. The only drawback? Apparently the device uses an edge-lit backlight that limits the device's lifetime to 30,000 hours compared to 50,000 for existing LCD monitors). According to the company, you can look forward to seeing these things hit store shelves sometime in 2011.

Samsung develops USB-powered desktop PC monitor, plans 2011 street date originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 29 May 2010 20:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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MSI follows fate's whispers, intros 24-inch Wind Top AE2420 3D

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/29/msi-follows-fates-whispers-intros-24-inch-wind-top-ae2420-3d/

Typical, right? As the 3D craze flows from the cinema to the television and onto the PC, it was just a matter of time before one of MSI's Wind Top all-in-ones shipped with support for the third dimension. By most accounts, the new Wind Top AE2420 3D looks like a mildly larger version of the AE2220 we peeked late last year, touting a 24-inch 1080p multitouch panel, support for shutter glasses (a single pair is included), Core i5 or i7 CPU options and an ATI Mobility Radeon HD5730 pushing the pixels. There's also a pair of 5-watt speakers built-in, not to mention an Ethernet jack, VGA output and a handful of USB 2.0 sockets. Mum's the word on pricing, but MSI is expected to have this bad boy on display as Computex kicks off early next week. Yeah, you know we'll be there pretending to be embarrassed while donning the spectacles.

Continue reading MSI follows fate's whispers, intros 24-inch Wind Top AE2420 3D

MSI follows fate's whispers, intros 24-inch Wind Top AE2420 3D originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 29 May 2010 22:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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OpenWays makes your smartphone a hotel room key, provides a different kind of 'unlock'

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/30/openways-makes-your-smartphone-a-hotel-room-key-provides-a-diff/

For years now, hotel chains have been toying with alternative ways to letting patrons check-in, access their room and run up their bill with all-too-convenient in-room services. Marriott began testing smartphone check-ins way back in 2006, and select boutique locations (like The Plaza Hotel in New York and Boston's Nine Zero) have relied on RFID, iris scanners, biometric identifiers and all sorts of whiz-bang entry methods in order to make getting past a lock that much easier (or harder, depending on perspective). This month, InterContinental Hotels Group announced that they would soon be trialing OpenWays at Chicago's Holiday Inn Express Houston Downtown Convention Center, enabling iPhone owners to fire up an app and watch their room door open in a magical sort of way. Other smartphone platforms will also be supported, and as we've seen with other implementations, users of the technology will also be able to turn to their phone to order additional services, extend their stay or fess up to that window they broke. There's no word on when this stuff will depart the testing phase and go mainstream, but we're guessing it'll be sooner rather than later. Video after the break, if you're interested.

Continue reading OpenWays makes your smartphone a hotel room key, provides a different kind of 'unlock'

OpenWays makes your smartphone a hotel room key, provides a different kind of 'unlock' originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 30 May 2010 01:31:00 EDT. Please see our t erms for use of feeds.

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Friday, May 28, 2010

Shogo 10-inch Linux tablet is a Qooq minus the recipes -- and the feet (video)

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/28/shogo-10-inch-linux-tablet-is-a-qooq-minus-the-recipes-and-th/

Shogo 10-inch Linux tablet is a Qook minus the recipes -- and the feet (video)

Last year's Qooq tablet hardly made much of a splash in the gadget industry, despite its cooking prowess and silly little feet. Now, the manufacturer behind the device, Realease, is shaving down the appendages and ditching the recipes to create the Shogo, a 10-inch, capacitive-touch Linux tablet. Two models will be offered with Freescale processors, one with the i.MX37 and another with the faster i.MX51, and much of the device's functionality will be provided through a webkit-based browser. We're a little unclear about the distribution plans here, as it really sounds like Realease would prefer to sell this thing in bulk to businesses than individually to shlemiels like us, but the thing apparently could go into mass production within a few months. Will it? Let's just say we're not quite as excited about that possibility as Charbax gets in the demonstration video below.

Continue reading Shogo 10-inch Linux tablet is a Qooq minus the recipes -- and the feet (video)

Shogo 10-inch Linux tablet is a Qooq minus the recipes -- and the feet (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 28 May 2010 12:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Shuttle opens US pre-orders for pricey Core i7-based J3 SFF PC

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/28/shuttle-opens-us-pre-orders-for-pricey-core-i7-based-j3-sff-pc/

Shuttle teased us just under a month ago with its Core i7-powered J3 desktop, and now that little bugger is finally up for pre-order in the States. The J3 5800P workstation is easily one of the most powerful small form factor PCs this planet has ever seen, boasting a six-core Core i7 980X Extreme Edition CPU, your choice of NVIDIA Quadro or ATI FirePro professional graphics, up to 16GB of DDR3 memory, room for two SATA hard drives, an optional Blu-ray drive, plenty of ports and a 500-watt power supply. Somehow or another, all of that fits into a chassis that measures just 8.5- x 7.5- x 13.1-inches, and if you've been looking to downsize without taking a hit in the performance department, you can finally do so starting at $1,899. The journey begins right there in the source link -- good luck keeping it below three large, Yes Man.

Continue reading Shuttle opens US pre-orders for pricey Core i7-based J3 SFF PC

Shuttle opens US pre-orders for pricey Core i7-based J3 SFF PC originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 28 May 2010 12:32:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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CHART OF THE DAY: The Half-Life Of A YouTube Video Is 6 Days (GOOG)

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-the-lifecycle-of-a-youtube-video-2010-5

A video on YouTube gets 50% of its views in the first 6 days it is on the site, according to data from analytics firm TubeMogul. After 20 days, a YouTube video has had 75% of its total views.

That's a really short life span for YouTube videos, and it's probably getting shorter. In 2008, it took 14 days for a video to get 50% of its views and 44 days to get 75% of its views.

Why? In the last two years, YouTube has improved its user interface, which helps videos get seen early on. Also, the world has gotten more adept at embedding and sharing videos in real-time via Twitter and Facebook. (And there's probably more video to choose from.)

What's this mean for publishers? For one thing, publishers should have advertising/monetization schemes ready to go for their videos right when they're published, because the hits come early.

It also means companies should be actively uploading videos to YouTube, says David Burch, a rep at TubeMogul. He notes that major companies like the NBA have been good at getting clips on YouTube quickly. If they didn't act fast, then they could miss an opportunity to get eyeballs.

chart of the day, youtube video lifecycle, may 2010

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PrintConductor Prints Documents in Batches Without Opening Them [Downloads]

Source: http://lifehacker.com/5549041/printconductor

PrintConductor Prints Documents in Batches Without Opening Them Windows: Got a host of PDFs, Office documents, or, heck, AutoCad documents to print out? Load them into PrintConductor, and you can batch print them without opening the apps they came from. Better still, you can print them all to PDF.

PrintConductor doesn't require much more explanation. You can team it with the Universal Document Converter print driver to batch-process all your documents into PDFs, but you can also use your own virtual printer driver, like doPDF. If you're planning to print the same batch of documents more than once, you can save your queues to a file for later loading.

PrintConductor is a free download for Windows systems only. Already have a batch PDF conversion process you prefer? Share it with your fellow document shufflers in the comments.

PrintConductor [via AddictiveTips]

The next Apple TV revealed: cloud storage and iPhone OS on tap... and a $99 price tag

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/28/the-next-apple-tv-revealed-cloud-storage-and-iphone-os-on-tap/

If you thought that Apple's foray into the world of home entertainment died with the last iteration of the Apple TV, you're quite wrong. A tip we've received -- which has been confirmed by a source very close to Apple -- details the outlook for the next version of the Apple TV, and it's a doozy. According to our sources, this project has been in the works long before Google announced its TV solution, and it ties much more closely into Apple's mobile offerings. The new architecture of the device will be based directly on the iPhone 4, meaning it will get the same internals, down to that A4 CPU and a limited amount of flash storage -- 16GB to be exact -- though it will be capable of full 1080p HD (!). The device is said to be quite small with a scarce amount of ports (only the power socket and video out), and has been described to some as "an iPhone without a screen." Are you ready for the real shocker? According to our sources, the price-point for the device will be $99. One more time -- a hundred bucks.

Not only will this be priced to sell (like hotcakes), it seems that Apple is moving away from the model of local storage, and will be focusing the new ATV on cloud-based storage (not unlike Amazon's streaming scheme, though we're talking instant-on 1080p, a la Microsoft). For those still interested in keeping their content close, there will be an option to utilize a Time Capsule as an external storage component, but the main course will be all about streaming. The new ATV will do away with its current OS X-lite variation as a operating system, and will instead adopt the iPhone OS for the underlying experience. There's no word at this point on whether apps and the App Store will be coming along for the ride, but it makes sense given the shared platform. Of course, scaling iPhone apps to that 52-inch plasma in your living room isn't exactly a no-brainer. Perhaps not surprisingly, Apple won't deliver the ATV news at the upcoming WWDC -- that event will be focused on the capabilities of the new iPhone -- but development on the product is most definitely full steam ahead. Is your TV screen the next battleground in the platform wars? Survey says: hell yes.

The next Apple TV revealed: cloud storage and iPhone OS on tap... and a $99 price tag originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 28 May 2010 10:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Skype Mobile with video support coming to Android Market later this year?

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/28/skype-mobile-with-video-support-coming-to-android-market-later-t/

Skype's PR folks have been unusually loquacious today, as they've responded to a query about whether HTC's EVO 4G would get a Skype client with a deep and meaningful forward-looking statement, underpinned by a promise of an Android app "for all consumers globally to download regardless of carriers." This universally available addition to the Market should arrive "later this year," but what's important about it is that it's preceded by a lengthy spiel about Skype's ambition to "set the bar on mobile video calling," which it also intends to do this year. Does this necessarily mean that Skype video calling is coming to Android in time for us to wish granny happy Hanukkah over video chat? No. Is it a well constructed insinuation to that effect? Hell yes. Read the full statement at the source, or find the juiciest excerpt after the break.

[Thanks, Jeremy]

Continue reading Skype Mobile with video support coming to Android Market later this year?

Skype Mobile with video support coming to Android Market later this year? originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 28 May 2010 06:39:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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