Dr. Augustine Fou's Online Scrapbook

Monday, March 21, 2011

Samsung Galaxy S II Mini leaks out for Three, plus Nokia X7, Flyer and PlayBook release dates in UK

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/03/20/samsung-galaxy-s-ii-mini-leaks-out-for-three-uk-plus-nokia-x7/

No, not the Galaxy Mini, that low-end Android sprout -- this looks like Samsung's smaller alternative to the upcoming Galaxy S II superphone. We just got handed UK carrier Three's entire spring-summer lineup, and the Android 2.3 handset certainly stands out, pretending to be miniature in spite of a 3.7-inch screen (think Droid), a 1.4GHz processor (think Pre 3) and 21Mbps HSPA+ connectivity. But that's the tip of the iceberg compared to what's in store for Three -- it looks like the Nokia X7 is alive, well, and tracking for a June release (not to mention the LG Optimus 3D), and tablets will drop too, with May bringing the HTC Flyer and the WiFi-only BlackBerry PlayBook launching in June. See specs and slated launch windows in our gallery below, and join us in hoping these documents portend a rapid US release.

Gallery: Three UK leaked roadmap with Galaxy S II Mini

[Thanks, Anonymous]

Samsung Galaxy S II Mini leaks out for Three, plus Nokia X7, Flyer and PlayBook release dates in UK originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 20 Mar 2011 16:04:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Samsung, Novatel LTE mobile hotspots said to be hitting Verizon any day now

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/03/21/samsung-novatel-lte-mobile-hotspots-said-to-be-hitting-verizon/

We haven't heard much about these since Verizon first showed them off way back at CES, but Phone Arena is reporting that a launch of Samsung and Novatel's new LTE mobile hotspots is now finally "imminent." That includes Novatel's USB551L LTE dongle in addition to the 4510L MiFi, both of which will be Mac-compatible out of the box (unlike Verizon's first pair of LTE modems), although that functionality has yet to be confirmed for Samsung's SCH-L11 hotspot. Still no word on pricing for any of them either, but Phone Arena says all three will be receiving a $50 rebate, so a price in line with Verizon's current, similarly-discounted $99 modems seems likely.

[Thanks, Valentin]

Samsung, Novatel LTE mobile hotspots said to be hitting Verizon any day now originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 21 Mar 2011 03:13:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Nexus S 4G confirmed by Sprint's own website, first 'fully integrated' Google Voice smartphone

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/03/21/nexus-s-4g-confirmed-by-sprints-own-website-first-fully-integ/

in case we didn't leak this thoroughly enough for your tastes, here's Sprint spoiling its own surprise: the Nexus S is coming to the Now Network in a 4G flavor. Touted as "Pure Google," this WiMAX-toting device will be the very first to feature "fully integrated" Google Voice -- which we're told means using only one number for all your calls and permits for things like web calling and voicemail transcription. Pretty snazzy, if you ask us, and potentially even more important than the mere addition of 4G networking. All it took to discover this bit of intel was a casual search for "nexus" on Sprint's web portal, not exactly the hardest snooping job ever, but we appreciate our eagle-eyed tipster for doing it all the same. Now it's just a matter of waiting a few more hours until Sprint's CTIA event to hear the full details of its collaboration with Google.

[Thanks, MTW]

Update: What do you know, Sprint must read Engadget. The offending search topic has now disappeared from its public servers.

Nexus S 4G confirmed by Sprint's own website, first 'fully integrated' Google Voice smartphone originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 21 Mar 2011 04:03:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Porsche opens 918 Spyder plug-in supercar pre-orders, $845,000 gets you a ticket to ride

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/03/21/porsche-opens-918-spyder-plug-in-supercar-pre-orders-845-000-g/

Porsche opens 918 Spyder plug-in supercar pre-orders, $845,000 gets you a ticket to ride

It isn't quite as hot as the 918 RSR, but it is at least street legal. Or, will be, anyway. It's the 918 Spyder, one of the hottest hybrids we've ever seen, and Porsche has now opened the doors for those who want to order them. $845,000 gets you a car with a mid-mounted V8 putting down "at least" 500HP. That's paired with two electric motors, one front and one rear, which provide an additional 218 horsepower and AWD handling to boot. Unlike the RSR these motors will be powered by a Li-ion battery pack that will offer 16 miles of purely electric range when charged for about seven hours on a standard 110 outlet. More impressively, this carbon-fiber convertible will get to 60MPH in 3.1 seconds (matching the 911 Turbo S we played with last month) yet deliver 78MPG. That's not quite up to the levels Volvo's promising for its V60 plug-in diesel, but we're thinking this bad boy might be a little more fun to drive. What won't be fun is the wait: the 918 isn't expected to start shipping until the end of 2013. That gives you plenty of time to build your dream garage -- and practice your pronunciation of "Doppelkupplung."

Gallery: Porsche 918 Sypder

Continue reading Porsche opens 918 Spyder plug-in supercar pre-orders, $845,000 gets you a ticket to ride

Porsche opens 918 Spyder plug-in supercar pre-orders, $845,000 gets you a ticket to ride originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 21 Mar 2011 06:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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ASUS to debut Eee Pad Transformer in Taiwan this Friday, Honeycomb confirmed

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/03/21/asus-to-debut-eee-pad-transformer-in-taiwan-this-friday-honeyco/

While we've yet to see other Honeycomb tablets materialize in the shops after the Xoom, news has it that ASUS is about to debut its Eee Pad Transformer back in its home country this Friday. There's still no final pricing to be seen for this Tegra 2 device, but some of our watchful readers have already spotted the stricken-through $799 label -- in US dollars, oddly enough -- on ASUS' Transformer countdown page on Facebook, and hopefully this price tag will cover the docking kit as well. Anyhow, anxious Android fans will be able to order this peculiar 10.1-inch slate -- in 16GB or 32GB flavor -- later this week, so that Taiwanese pen pal of yours will finally come in handy.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

ASUS to debut Eee Pad Transformer in Taiwan this Friday, Honeycomb confirmed originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 21 Mar 2011 07:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Netbook News, Engadget Chinese | source

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Sunday, March 20, 2011

Long live Digg, Web 2.0 Pioneer - community curation will live on -- http://bit.ly/h7heAq

Beetailer Helps Online Retailers Set Up Shop On Facebook

Source: http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/20/beetailer-helps-online-retailers-set-up-shop-on-facebook/

With Facebook’s massive userbase of over 600 million consumers across the globe, retailers are actively flocking to the network. Especially considering the rise of the social e-commerce, the idea of a virtual shopping mall on Facebook makes sense.

Today, Y Combinator-backed Beetailer is launching its software application that allows online retailers to import their web store onto Facebook. Not only does Beetailer import products onto a designated Facebook page, but the startup also allows retailers to promote their store and access detailed analytics about how well the social storefront is performing.

Beetailer’s software connects with existing e-commerce platform, such as Magento and Shopify, and will import and sync online catalogs including, prices, images, sizes, colors and even whether products are in stock. The online storefront will populate on the retailer’s Facebook page and will essentially allow Facebook users to browse and add products to a shopping cart within the social network. When a user clicks to checkout and actually purchase the products, Beetailer will lead the user to the e-retailer’s website so the shopper will checkout via the retailer’s preferred payment process.

But in addition to accessing the social network’s vast userbase, retailers can also leverage Facebook’s social graph to engage consumers. Beetailer allows retailers to launch time-limited, Facebook-specific promotions, including prizes and discounts for fans who like, comment, and bring other friends to the store.

Additionally, Beetailer provides retailers with analytics to measure the results of each
promotion. Beetailer’s data will include traffic, demographic data, most visited products, most visited categories, number of checkout and more.

Currently, Beetailer, which was co-founded by Spanish engineers Laura Valverde, Miguel A. Martinez and Juan Gallego, has helped 900 online retailers (here’s an example) set up shop on Facebook for more than 434,000 products. There are a number of other players in the same space, including Payvment, which also helps retailers set up online storefront on Facebook.

But as shopping on the social network ramps up there is a need for a variety of offerings to help retailers leverage the power of Facebook.

CrunchBase Information

Information provided by CrunchBase

CamCard Captures and Transcribes Business Cards from iPhone and Android [Downloads]

Source: http://lifehacker.com/#!5783256/camcard-captures-and-saves-business-cards-to-your-contacts

iOS/Android: You go to a conference, you get about 40 business cards, and, well, maybe you remember to go through each and every one and add their details to your contacts. Or you fire up CamCard, snap a picture, and have its text quickly transcribed and entered into your contacts.

CamCard offers its own camera function to snap an image of a business card, preferably head-on in a decently-lit area. It rotates, flattens, and enhances that snapshot, then runs it through an optical character recognition process to extract the text and numbers on its face. After that, check the entries for name, number, email, and other details against the image close-ups (as seen above), and hit Save, then choose the account you want to save those details to.

CamCard Captures and Transcribes Business Cards from iPhone and Android CamCard can also read a business card from an image you've already captured, and it saves your card images to your storage. From the cards it's saved, CamCard also allows for quick look-up and calling, emailing, or LinkedIn browsing right from the app. If you have a host of cards to move through, or you just got a card that's a bit more important than the rest, CamCard looks like it could be really handy. I'll be using it to punch through a host of cards from South by Southwest.

CamCard is offered as a free "Lite" download, limited to saving 10 cards your first week, then 2 cards per week after that. Upgraded versions for iOS and Android offer unlimited cards and additional languages (in Western/European and Asian packages).

CamCard [Android Market]

Use ScraperWiki to Help Turn Web Pages Into Usable Data [Programming]

Source: http://lifehacker.com/#!5783602/use-scraperwiki-to-help-turn-web-pages-into-usable-data

A scraper is a program written to take content off of a webpage or other data source and turn it into some kind of usable format, usually an RSS feed or by entering it directly into a database. Designing a scraper can be tricky as each site is different, ScraperWiki aims to fix this by creating a repository of these scripts with a goal to ease the pain of designing them.

An example use of a scraper: let's say a government entity releases daily information regarding finances, and you want to graph or otherwise track this data for personal or business use. Going to the website each day and entering the data manually is certainly one labor-intensive way to do it, but as with any good hacker will tell you - if you have to do anything more than once it is better to automate it.

ScraperWiki is a centralized location for these custom built scrapers. Instead of writing your own from scratch, you can search their database to see if a scraper has already been written for a source.

One of the functions of ScraperWiki is to support open government initiatives. The Big Clean is actually being held today with the goal of opening local government data with the help of scrapers and data processors.

Scrapers are categories by language - PHP, Python and Ruby - and the site is currently in beta.

Researchers tout self-repairing multi-core processors

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/03/18/researchers-tout-self-repairing-multi-core-processors/

The race for ever-tinier computer chips is on, and barring physical limitations, doesn't seem to be slowing anytime soon -- but with chips, as with humans, the smaller they get, the more fragile they become. A team of researchers called CRISP (Cutting edge Reconfigurable ICs for Stream Processing) is working to create a self-repairing multi-core processor that would allow on-chip components to keep on shrinking, while combating concerns over accelerated degradation. Basically, the team's conceptualized a chip that allows for 100 percent functionality, even with faulty components. With multiple cores sharing tasks, and a run-time resource manager doling out those tasks, the chip can continue to degrade without ever compromising its intended functions -- a process CRISP calls graceful degradation. Once one core fails, the on-chip manager assigns its task to another core, continuing on in this fashion for the complete lifetime of the chip. Of course the technology is still in its infancy, but if CRISP's chips comes to fruition, we could see virtually indestructible processors that make 14nm look bulky by comparison.

Researchers tout self-repairing multi-core processors originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 18 Mar 2011 18:48:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Samsung's Central Station wireless monitor appears in Europe as SyncMaster C27A750

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/03/19/samsungs-central-station-wireless-monitor-appears-in-europe-as/

Back when we first laid eyes on Samsung's Central Station, we were excited by its wireless docking capabilities, and now it looks like the company's ready to let the monitor loose on European soil, albeit with a decidedly less American moniker. The SyncMaster C27A750, a 27-inch affair, uses Ultra Wide Band (UWB) technology via a USB dongle to connect to your laptop. It touts a 1920 x 1080 pixel resolution and sports HDMI, VGA, and USB 2.0 and 3.0 ports. The new SyncMaster will hit Europe by the end of April for about €600, but we've yet to hear anything about Central Station's ETA -- very sneaky, Samsung... very sneaky.

Samsung's Central Station wireless monitor appears in Europe as SyncMaster C27A750 originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 19 Mar 2011 10:55:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

SlashGear | source

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Nanoparticle inks print 3D antennas 'orders of magnitude' better than your boring 2D antenna

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/03/20/nanoparticle-inks-print-3d-antennas-orders-of-magnitude-better/

Nanoparticle inks print 3D antennas 'orders of magnitude' better than your boring 2D antenna

If you want better cellphone reception it's time to go small or go home, with researchers at the University of Illinois coming up with a nanoscale printing technique that allows for the creation of so-called 3D antennas. Of course, unless you're hunting for signal in Flatland all antennas are to some degree three-dimensional, but these suckers are printed using nanoparticle silver ink onto a curved substrate, as shown up yonder. The resulting components "exhibit performance metrics that are an order of magnitude better than those realized by monopole antenna designs." In fact these creations are said to approach the Chu-Harrington Limit of theoretical performance in an antenna. Most important? They look pretty darned cool. Shame they'll likely find themselves tucked away inside of a device's chassis -- whenever they actually go into production.

Continue reading Nanoparticle inks print 3D antennas 'orders of magnitude' better than your boring 2D antenna

Nanoparticle inks print 3D antennas 'orders of magnitude' better than your boring 2D antenna originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 20 Mar 2011 01:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Daily Tech ! ;| source

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University of Illinois | Email this | Comments

Friday, March 18, 2011

#RutgersCMD - consistent theme from presentations is a focus on content and cadence of dissemination - right on!

#RutgersCMD - relationships can be created starting with one tweet; can you provide enough value to sustain them?

Thursday, March 17, 2011

Whoa! Your New iPad Will Stick To Your Fridge [Ipad2]

Source: http://gizmodo.com/#!5782954/whoa-your-new-ipad-will-stick-to-your-fridge

Provided your new iPad is attached to its magnetical Smart Cover, it'll cling on to your refrigerator like a spider monkey to a tree branch. Or like something magnetic to something metal. It's true! That's my iPad sticking to my fridge this very morning. It seems like it's all being held up by the magnets on the flap of the Smart Cover, and I must say it feels surprisingly secure—I could definitely use it as a reference while cooking (read: doing FaceTime with my Mom while she tells me how to cook) without being too worried about slippage. Disclaimer: don't do this at home, because maybe your refrigerator isn't as magnet-friendly as mine, or maybe you're clumsy, or I don't really know, just know that I'm in no way responsible if you break your iPad trying to use it as a giant refrigerator magnet. [9to5Mac]

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