Friday, August 06, 2010

Apple Peel 520 gets reviewed: turns your iPod touch into an iPhone, but quirks exist

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/apple-peel-520-gets-reviewed-turns-your-ipod-touch-into-an-ipho/

No one expressly said that the Apple Peel 520 would change your life, but if you play your cards right, that's not entirely out of the question. The mysterious doodad -- which wraps around your iPod touch and holds an extended battery and SIM card -- has caused quite the stir since being revealed late last month, and now it has undergone a full review overseas. Put simply, the device does work as advertised, turning one's iPod touch into a device fully capable of making / receiving calls as well as texts. 'Course, you'll need to jailbreak your device first, and you'll have to deal with a static (read: impossible to adjust) call volume, quirky SMS delivery and blanked messages for missed calls, but hey -- a small price to pay for the upgrade, right? Hit the source link for the full skinny and a video to boot.

Apple Peel 520 gets reviewed: turns your iPod touch into an iPhone, but quirks exist originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 05 Aug 2010 21:38:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | source

source

M.I.C. Gadget | Email this | Comments

NFL mulling microchips in footballs for those life-or-death goal line rulings

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/06/nfl-mulling-microchips-in-footballs-for-those-life-or-death-goal/

The NFL is serious business. So serious, in fact, that the idea of refs getting decisions wrong sends chills up and down Roger Goodell's spine. Yeah, we all know they do it habitually, but the League seems to be considering improving accuracy just a little bit with the help of some tech. Cairos Technologies, a German outfit that's been trying to sell its goal line technology to football (as in soccer) bigwigs for a while, has told Reuters that it's in discussions with the NFL about bringing its magnetic field hocus pocus to the gridiron. The idea would be for the ref to be alerted, via a message to his watch, any time the ball does something notable like crossing the goal line or first down marker. It should be a great aid for making difficult calls like whether a touchdown has happened at the bottom of a scrum, and might even help cut down on the number of frightfully dull replay challenges. Win-win, no?

Original image courtesy of NFL.com

Continue reading NFL mulling microchips in footballs for those life-or-death goal line rulings

NFL mulling microchips in footballs for those life-or-death goal line rulings originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 06 Aug 2010 06:09:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

CNET |

source

Reuters | Email this | Comments

North America's first public-use quick-charge station opens in Portland: 3-handed politician not included

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/06/north-americas-first-public-use-quick-charge-station-opens-in-p/

What's being hailed as North America's first public-use quick-charge station for electric vehicles has just been unveiled in Portland. The station, built by NEC subsidiary Takasago, is installed in a PGE headquarters parking garage and will charge electric vehicles with lithium-ion batteries to 80% in about 20 to 30 minutes. So yeah, it's public, as long as you've got a PGE badge apparently. Anyway, the grand opening was led by Governor Ted Kulongoski, pictured above carefully maintaining a safe distance while charging a Nissan Leaf. Guess you can never be too careful when pumping 50kW into a pre-production vehicle. Click through to see a video demonstration of the future, if we're lucky.

Update: We're being told that the quick charge station is installed in a public parking garage that is part of the World Trade Center building in downtown Portland (where PGE's headquarters are). It costs $3 to park, but charging is on the house. Thanks, Chris!

Continue reading North America's first public-use quick-charge station opens in Portland: 3-handed politician not included

North America's first public-use quick-charge station opens in Portland: 3-handed politician not included originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 06 Aug 2010 06:25:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | | Email this | Comments

Keepin' it real fake: Nokia's Android N8

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/06/keepin-it-real-fake-nokias-android-n8/

Can you believe we've waited on the N8 long enough for (at least) three KIRF versions to beat it to market? This latest one's pretty special too, as it gives us a glimpse into one of the fevered dream of Engadget commenters: a Nokia flagship rocking Android (2.1, in this case). The iZiNN CJ-3 copies the N8's form factor, styling, and 3.5-inch screen, but throws in an upgrade of its own by going with a higher-res 800 x 480 capacitive panel. Yeah, we're shocked too. A 5 megapixel imager, a budget Rockchip CPU, and an HDMI port fill out the rest of the known specs, while a release in China is expected some time later this month. Anyone know why this thing isn't being built and sold by a legitimate manufacturer?

[Thanks, Ludger]

Keepin' it real fake: Nokia's Android N8 originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 06 Aug 2010 09:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

NokiaPhones.net, Cloned in China | source

source

Mobile Uncle | Email this | Comments

ASUS' Windows Phone 7 debuts in the wild?

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/06/asus-windows-phone-7-debuts-in-the-wild/

Boy, this thing here has more questions than answers attached to it. Presented as the first Windows Phone 7 device to show up in Pakistan, of all places, this angular handset bears a serial number on top and atypical "powered by ASUS" branding on the bottom, leading us to believe that if it's legit, it's certainly a pre-production model. Even so, should you dare to invest some trust into its validity, you'll find plenty of reason to be titillated: brushed metal adorns the front, a rare sight on mobile phones of any description, the top right corner looks suspiciously like it might be housing a front-facing camera, and the display looks very much like an OLED panel to us. Exciting, if true.

[Thanks, Raju]

Update: Turns out the phone in question belongs to the leakster's brother. Perhaps he's an ASUS engineer on vacation in his home town?

ASUS' Windows Phone 7 debuts in the wild? originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 06 Aug 2010 10:23:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Pocketnow | source

source

Shaistajafri (Twitter) | Email this | Comments

May the best "cattle" (RT @MikeDuda) win based on real creativity and merits - http://bit.ly/c1pDjp

Ahh! So happy I don't know where to begin. Voss launches agency search via PR (email to AdAge) to crowdsource the best http://bit.ly/c1pDjp

Thursday, August 05, 2010

EVGA's dual-CPU Classified SR-2 motherboard put to the test: worth the money if you know what you're doing

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/evgas-dual-cpu-classified-sr-2-motherboard-put-to-the-test-wor/

You know things are changing when cooling units that could once stave off overheating on top-tier graphics cards are starting to show up on motherboards. EVGA's Classified SR-2 is a supersized, dual-socket desktop building block that tries to do it all, and -- unusually for dual-CPU logic boards -- it's targeted at enthusiasts rather than buttoned-down business types. Four PCI-Express x16 slots, room for a dozen memory sticks (up to 48GB of RAM), and two USB 3.0 ports add some spec sheet glamor, but you'll likely be wanting to know how much performance you can wring out of two 3.33GHz Intel Xeon 5680 chips working in tandem. The short answer is a lot. The long answer is, of course, that you'll need to apply those 24 threads of power to applications that can really utilize them, such as the predictable video processing and 3D rendering. That's where the multithreaded, multicore, multiprocessor rig really shone in this review, and the EVGA board underpinning it also acquitted itself with distinction. Hit the source for the benchmark results and more photography of exposed circuitry.

EVGA's dual-CPU Classified SR-2 motherboard put to the test: worth the money if you know what you're doing originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 05 Aug 2010 10:06:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | source

source

Hot Hardware | Email this | Comments

Sikorsky's X2 Prototype Breaks Rotorcraft Speed Record With 258 MPH Flight

Source: http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2010-08/sikorskys-x2-prototype-breaks-rotorcraft-speed-record-258-mph-flight

We were quite impressed with the Sikorsky X2 prototype when we featured it last year as a Best of What's New pick, but it's looking even better these days. The super-fast, dual-rotor helicopter is still in the prototype stage, but has already broken the rotorcraft speed record of 249 mph by reaching 258 miles per hour last week during a test flight.

Many helos top out around 200 miles per hour -- for a frame of reference, an Apache attack helicopter's top speed is listed as 176 miles per hour -- so the futuristic-looking X2 is setting the bar pretty high. Its dual-rotor, counter-rotating design creates increased stability for the pilot, allowing its six-blade, rear-facing propeller to push the aircraft to speeds that would make a traditional helo too unstable to keep on a straight heading.

Of course, this was just a test flight and the X2 isn't even close to done setting records. By the time the X2 completes testing, its designers think it can reach 288 miles per hour while still cruising comfortably.

[Sikorsky via DVICE]

LG U+ cloud service links connected devices, requires a relocation to South Korea to enjoy

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/lg-u-cloud-service-links-connected-devices-requires-a-relocati/

Microsoft's Steve Ballmer is probably dreaming of three screens and a cloud right now, so it makes sense that his company has extended its hand to LG in order to build out the new U+ cloud storage service. Launched over in South Korea, this new service is expected to provide a "seamless connection" between a smorgasbord of connected devices -- everything from TVs to digital photo frames to PMPs to tablets (plus a few we're missing). The goal is to allow any connected device to enjoy the same content, and rather than putting it on each individual consumer to setup their own wireless NAS (or use Air Sync), LG's taking some of the load off while adding a few nifty extras (streaming VOD, anyone?). The standard U+ box arrives with 1GB of storage, but consumers can opt for a 10GB package as well as the ability to access their material across the country via LG's U+ WiFi hotspots. Actual costs don't seem readily apparent, but given that paltry storage maximum, we're guessing the majority of you won't even bother to investigate.

Continue reading LG U+ cloud service links connected devices, requires a relocation to South Korea to enjoy

LG U+ cloud service links connected devices, requires a relocation to South Korea to enjoy originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 05 Aug 2010 08:58:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Akihabara News | source

source

LG | Email this | Comments

Toshiba PortÃ©gÃ© R705 Review: The Ultra Ultraportable [Review]

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5603773/toshiba-portege-r705-review-the-ultra-ultraportable

Toshiba's Portégé line has always been the top of the company's shelf—with prices to match. The Portégé R705 upends that lineage: It's capable, sure, but it's also affordable. So does it live up to its fancy double-accent-marks?

Spoiler alert: yes. It's not that the Portégé R705 is the fastest laptop out there. Or the prettiest. But it's in a class by itself among ultraportable notebooks, packing more performance into a lighter frame than anyone else has to date, at a wholly competitive price. Is there room for improvement? Of course. But there's much more here to like than not.

Price and Configuration

The system we tested—the only configuration available on this Best Buy exclusive—comes loaded with a 2.26GHz Core i3-350M processor and Intel integrated graphics, 4GB DDR3 RAM, a 500GB (5400rpm) hard drive, and an optical drive for $800. If you want color options, you've come to the wrong place. But hey, isn't nearly black the new black anyway?

Design

The first thing you notice about the new Portégé is the weight. Or rather, the lack thereof. It's incongruous, really; this full performance, 13.3-inch notebook weighs just a touch more than a netbook. In fact, at 3.2lbs it weighs about 25-percent less than my 13-inch MacBook Pro. Switching between the two feels like moving from a discus to a Frisbee.

Your first assumption is that the R705 must be somehow diminished or cheap: A wimpy ULV processor, say. Flimsy materials. Nope. As the gaudy sticker on the palm rest boasts, there's a full Core i3 Intel inside, and the body is constructed of sturdy magnesium. There's even, so help me, a DVD drive. What the what?

The weight-saving voodoo comes from Toshiba's Airflow Cooling Technology, a new heat-fighting scheme co-developed with Intel that uses directed streams of air to cool components. It's what lets Portégé R705 walk like a ULV notebook but talk like the varsity rig it is.

The only sacrifices that keep the R705 from letterman status are aesthetic. The Portégé isn't ugly, it's just bland. It's blocky and nondescript. The cover is midnight blue but looks black much of the time; the corners are softened but still angular. Chrome screen hinges are the closest thing here to flair, unless you count the four stickers crammed beneath the keyboard. They look like someone slapped tuner stickers on a bone-stock Civic.

Thankfully, you'll spend most of the time covering those up with your sweaty wrists. The display's where you'll be spending most of your time, and the Portégé's 13.3-inch 1366x768 screen is crisp, clear, and bright—albeit somewhat glossy. It's really very nice, especially when the brightness is cranked up, but it would be nice not to see quite so much of my reflection. The speakers, too, are decent to a point; over a certain volume the tinniness overwhelms the sound, but the quality's just fine for your average Hulu binge.

But that's the fun stuff—what about when you need to bang out emails to your new Nigerian mineral heir friend? The Portégé sports an island-style keyboard, whereon each chiclet island feels an ocean away from its neighbor. The small spaces afforded each letter don't amount to a big deal, although the large-fingered among us might have a hard time typing accvbur1ytly. But where the keyboard may be annoying for some, the trackpad is genuinely crappy. It claims to speak multitouch but really isn't anywhere close to fluent. Sure, it pinch-to-zooms, but two-fingered scrolling only worked in fits and starts. Or stops, rather. It's unreliable to the point of abandonment.

Reliable but less essential is the R705's WiDi capability, which lets you wirelessly connect your desktop to your TV. It works perfectly well here, but keep in mind that WiDi doesn't play DVDs under DRM or support 1080p, and you'll need to purchase a $100 add-on from Netgear to use it. It's good, not great, and it's not something that should factor heavily into your overall decision.

The same thing could be said about the R705's overall look: it's nice enough, but the bread and butter's under the hood.

Performance

This is where the Portégé really shines. It's not that it's the most powerful laptop out there—that's a fight we'll leave to the gamers—but it's got incredible pep for its size and weight. While you wouldn't necessarily trust the Core i3–350M processor (and, more specifically, Intel's gimped integrated graphics) to do any heavy gaming, the Portégé can stream HD videos without much difficulty and is more than capable of handling our email/internet/productivity needs.

Benchmarks? Sure! The Portégé stacks up nicely against its contemporaries and mops the floor with Core2Duo and ULV machines. Here's how it performed in GeekBench against the Acer Aspire TimelineX, its primary competitor—though a pound heavier—that also packs Core i3:
It's not a huge gap, but it's definitive. Moreover, the R705's overall mark of 4145 more than double's the ThinkPad Edge's previous generation SU7300 ULV guts.

The Portégé also put up a 4959 in PCMark Vantage, slightly ahead of the TimelineX and miles beyond any Core2Duo ULV performance. Though the integrated graphics could stymie some of your high definition video efforts, and while you wouldn't want this to be your go-to gaming rig, it's more than capable of keeping up with everyday needs.

So the R705 is a great daily driver. Unfortunately, it runs out of gas in a lot less than a day.

Battery Life

While not as impressive as the listed 8 hours, I was actually able to squeeze pretty decent stamina from the R705. I tested higher performance settings, medium screen brightness, bluetooth off (because there is none), and a page automatically reloading every 30 seconds on Firefox to simulate active web browsing.

Total Run Time: 4 hours, 58 minutes

And that can obviously be further improved by settling for lower performance/higher battery life settings.

All In the Balance

The R705 isn't the flashiest notebook out there, and it's not the most powerful, and it's not the lightest. But it's got incredible pop for its weight, and there's something refreshing about the minimal form.

Do I have reservations? Sure. The desktop is refreshingly free of bloatware, but the system gets bogged down with Best Buy's software installer. The cooling system may keep the chassis light, but the rig also gets pretty hot. There's no bluetooth. And the trackpad and integrated graphics really are less than ideal.

But those are nits that I'm picking, each no heavier, relatively, than the R705 itself. And together, they still don't prevent this new Portégé from being a once in a blue moon every day laptop.

Incredible performance-to-weight ratio

Affordable considering the brand and the specs

Decent battery life

Utilitarian design

Trackpad two-finger scrolling just doesn't work

No bluetooth, if you're into that

Help Survey Genghis Khan's Lost Tomb With Some Armchair Archaeology [Archaeology]

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5604701/help-survey-genghis-khans-lost-tomb-with-some-armchair-archaeology

If you're bummed that SETI@home hasn't quite succeeded in pinpointing our friendly extraterrestrial neighbors, National Geographic is offering up another ambitious project you can get involved in at home: surveying the Mongolian region that holds Genghis Khan's tomb.

NatGeo's Valley of the Khans project allows armchair archaeologists to sift through satellite imagery of the region—multispectral shots provided by the GeoEye-1 and Ikonos sattelites—and mark what they think could be ancient roads, rivers, or other anomalies. And that's only one aspect of this high-tech effort.

At the University of California in San Diego, researchers are employing a HIPerSpace (Highly Interactive Parallelized Display Space) wall—seen above—to visualize huge expanses of the Mongolian region, scaling into the billions of pixels.

And then there's the StarCAVE, an Earthquake-proof, 3D visualization room which surrounds researchers with images in better-than-HD resolution—it's a few square feets' worth of Northern Mongolian vista, perfectly reproduced thousands of miles away in California.

You can find out more and join the Field Expedition team for the Valley of the Khans project over on National Geographic's site. And if hunching over your laptop wasn't exactly how you envisioned your swashbuckling archeological adventure, you can always compliment your pajamas with an Indiana Jones fedora. [National Geographic's Valley of the Khans Project]

Logitech 7.1 Surround Sound G930 Gaming Headset Frags Wires Too [Gaming]

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5604940/logitech-71-surround-sound-g930-gaming-headset-murders-wires-too

The update to Logitech's original 7.1 surround sound gaming headset, but it's wireless. Logitech says it's using "gaming-grade wireless," whatever that actually means. But happens if you're in the middle of a frag session and the batteries die?

The charging station basically turns it into a standard USB 7.1 gaming headset, so you can keep using it while it's charging. Like the original G35 it's got three programmable keys on the side to use for voice morphing, music or chat controls. It's pretty 'spensive at $160, but that's about how much "gaming" audio tends to run. [Logitech]

Jolicloud 1.0 now ready for your downloading delight on Windows or bootable USB

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/04/jolicloud-1-0-now-ready-for-your-downloading-delight-on-windows/

Tariq Krim's app-based cloud OS has been a long time coming, but it's finally freely available for download -- just grab a 16MB installer and you too can join the Jolicloud. We've been impressed more than once by the responsive netbook operating system which can boot in seconds flat, and now that it's got touchscreen support and a streamlined Windows dual-boot installer all for the bargain price of free, it's definitely worth a try. Give it a spin at our more coverage link, and let us know if it improves your life in any meaningful fashion. If your keyboard is inexorably intertwined with Windows, however, don't fret; a little penguin tells us a tablet PC version is also on the way.

Gallery: Jolicloud 1.0 press screens

Jolicloud 1.0 now ready for your downloading delight on Windows or bootable USB originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 04 Aug 2010 14:44:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

GigaOM |

source

Jolicloud Blog | Email this | Comments

PlayOn's web app brings Hulu and Netflix to iPod touch, iPhone

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/04/playons-web-app-brings-hulu-and-netflix-to-ipod-touch-iphone/

Tired of waiting around for Apple's "review process" to complete? So was PlayOn. Rather than sticking it out and dealing with the App Store's near-limitless amount of red tape, the content streaming startup has kicked out an HTML5 web app that enables Hulu (for now, at least) and Netflix streaming to iPod touch and iPhone devices. It's still hard at work perfecting things for the iPad, but given that it's completely free to surf over to its mobile web site (linked below), it's tough to complain with what we're being given right now. Early testers have praised the app's speed, and while you'll still need a Windows PC (yeah, PlayOn still doesn't have a Mac client) and a PlayOn subscription before indulging on your mobile, at least you've got an option that you once didn't. So, anyone digging the new avenue?

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

PlayOn's web app brings Hulu and Netflix to iPod touch, iPhone originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 04 Aug 2010 15:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Mobiputing | source

source

Venture Beat, PlayOn Mobile | Email this | Comments

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)