Filed under: Laptops
New Atom architecture Pine Trail on schedule for this year, says Intel's Eden originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 29 Jul 2009 17:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Filed under: Displays
WowWee Cinemin Swivel available for pre-order in U.S. and Europe originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 29 Jul 2009 18:44:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Cool move by Sony to bolster the number of titles in its Reader ebook store -- it's linked up with Google to provide over a million free public domain works from Google Books, just like those fun folks at Barnes and Noble. The books are in the EPUB format and will work with the PRS-505 or the PRS-700 in the US only for now -- different countries have different copyright terms, so we'd imagine the lawyers are busy sorting it all out. Sure, none of this will do much to shake the Kindle's market- and mindshare, but at least Sony won't be deleting this stuff off your device without your permission, right?Filed under: Handhelds
Sony brings over a million Google Books to the Reader originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 29 Jul 2009 21:46:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Filed under: Cellphones
LG releases first official shots of BL40 "New Chocolate" originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 29 Jul 2009 22:53:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | Email this | CommentsSource: http://lifehacker.com/5316921/how-to-sms-with-google-voice-from-any-mobile-phone
Even if you do have an Android phone, BlackBerry, or iPhone, you can still use this method to use the native SMS app on it. It's an inconvenient kluge, but it works.
First, log into Google Voice and configure it to forward text messages to your cell phone. When someone sends a text message to your Google Voice number, you'll receive the text on your phone–but not from the recipient's phone number. Instead, it will be a 406 number you've never seen before, with the person's name preceding the message (as pictured here). Add that number to your recipient's address book entry as "Other" or a custom label (like "GV SMS"). Each one of your text recipients will have a different 406 number.
From there on in, if you SMS that 406 number, your recipient will receive text messages from you—and it will look like they're coming from your Google Voice number. Their replies to any messages you send to that number will go back to your Google Voice number and come to you via the 406–meaning, your recipient never sees the 406 number. Like I said, it's a kluge, but it works.
We already mentioned this tip in our guide to easing your transition to Google Voice, but it's an important feature worth repeating.
Smarterware is Lifehacker editor emeritus Gina Trapani's new home away from 'hacker. To get all of the latest from Smarterware, be sure to subscribe to the Smarterware RSS feed. For more, check out Gina's weekly Smarterware feature here on Lifehacker.
accurate, descriptive page titles are in; creative, clever headlines are not-so-much -- http://bit.ly/nax2 -- well researched via @glenngabe
Media used to be finite; social "media" (converstions) can be infinite. In fact, this "media" does not even pre-exist - http://bit.ly/11Davq
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Once a game begins, players are presented with a web page and receive points to guess keywords for the pages in the top 5 results. Unveiled by Microsoft's Chris Quirk and Raman Chandrasekar at the Association for Computing Machinery's Special Interest Group on Informational Retrieval (SIGIR) Conference, the game is aimed at improving search algorithms and ranking.
MIT's Technology Review compares PageHunt to Luis von Ahn's spam-fighting puzzles and image tagging games. Nevertheless, for initial volunteer buy-in, it may actually have closer ties to Wikipedia. While the projects seem very different, they actually share similar missions. Wikipedia is aimed at collecting and distributing educational content to global audiences. Meanwhile, Microsoft's Page Hunt aims to increase the relevancy and speed at which information can be found.
Very few projects offer the general public a chance to volunteer in improving the sum of human knowledge in such a significant way. Wikipedia volunteers are often fiercely devoted to curating their pages knowing that even the US Health Department is factoring the community into their outreach strategy. Page Hunt's search relevancy game players may adopt a similar mentality.
One key barrier to this sort of adoption is the fact that Page Hunt's info will not likely be shared with non-Microsoft search players. Meanwhile Wikipedia content is shared freely as public domain information. It will be interesting to see if the Page Hunt community fleshes out in the same manner or if a less-proprietary search game will spring up in its place.
Discuss
University of Cincinnati student Kyle A Koch frequently synced his iPhone and backed up his iPhoto library, but wasn't so hot with the paper and study material organization. Since he knew he was reliable with iPhone images, he put his industrial design studies into practice and crafted cardboard-based docks that elevate the phone just enough to properly frame and capture 8.5x11 documents.
You can order a customized, pre-assembled version of Koch's scanner apparatus in cardboard or medium density fibreboard, but Koch also includes a free EPS file for downloading and DIY building. It builds roughly 15 inches tall and long, and would seem to be pretty cheap to build. Combined with a universal capture/OCR tool like Evernote and the powerful camera on an iPhone 3G S, it's definitely a work-able scanner solution for those who only need a few documents in digital form now and again.
The first release of Google Voice for Android offered Voice users an all-or-nothing proposition. Either you wanted to use Google Voice for every U.S. call, only for international calls, or not at all. The latest version available in the Android Market, 0.1.415, adds another option to ask you before placing each call whether to call on your standard carrier number or through Google Voice. It would be great to see a toggle setting for each contact—the boss gets your Google Voice number, friends on the same network get their free minutes—but it's a helpful step.
An updated Google Voice app can be downloaded free from the Android Market, or found at AndroLib. Thanks Gordon!
The AppleBlog's Mark Crump came up with a simple method for syncing and editing text between his computers and his iPhone using Gmail. The trick: Type up your text as a draft on either the iPhone or in the web interface and ta da! Gmail does the rest by keeping the two synced allowing for fully editable text.
This could be handy for quick on-the-go drafts or to-do lists and could be particularly handy if combined with a Gmail GTD system.
What's your preferred method of text syncing between your iPhone (or other smartphone) and your computers? How well does it work? Let's hear about it in the comments.
Photo by rore.
Over the course of the day, most people have speculated that Google Voice was rejected from the App Store at AT&T's behest. The reaso! n? Apple 's official line is that Google Voice duplicates features already on the iPhone—namely the Phone and Messages app. Of course, none of that holds water, considering the App Store is already full of alternate SMS apps and apps like Skype that sport a telephone dialer.
From another angle, Apple only seems concerned with duplication of features if an application competes with an app that they already made. If you're competing with another non-default third-party application, you can go and duplicate all you want (hence the oft-cited Fart apps). Still, if a Google Voice app actually does duplicate the functions of the telephone/SMS applications that ship with the iPhone, I want to know how I can use my iPhone to check my Google Voice inbox, send messages via Google Voice, or get my voicemails transcribed with what Apple and AT&T are offering. And do not send me to a crappy iPhone 1.0 webapp.
The real problem, then, is that Google Voice, and all it offers, is actually much better than what AT&T offers.
It's unfortunate, of course, because Google Voice doesn't actually stop anyone from using AT&T. It's not a VoIP app (yet), so you still need AT&T for it to work at all. Again, it simply improves on what the iPhone already has. It would actually make AT&T—and the iPhone—better. From my perspective as a consumer,! that in turn makes the iPhone a much more attractive device. Since it's been rejected on the iPhone but approved for Android phones and BlackBerrys, that in turn makes both of those devices that much more attractive.
Sure you can switch carriers if you're not happy—as long as you're willing to empty your pockets to drop out of your contract. That's always been the case. But Apple/AT&T have never sent such a clear message in the past about just how restrictive they'll get if they feel threatened by an application. Those of us who were once excited at the seemingly limitless potential of the App Store now know where we stand.
Apple would like you to believe that the goals of the App Store approval process are lofty ones—that they're only approving innovative apps and that the only reason they don't approve apps is to protect you from bad software or, horror of horrors, confusion. Because god knows it'd be confusing as hell to use a better phone application than what came with the phone. Meanwhile, thank god we can pass our time with iWet T-Shirts (borderline NSFW).
As far as I'm concerned, there's two things that set the iPhone apart from its competition: 1) It's got great hardware, and 2) It's got the most third-party applications.
The first issue is a hurdle for other phone providers/phone manufacturers to figure out; some already have matched the iPhone's hardware (as far as its guts go, the iPhone and the Palm Pre aren't all that different) and others will eventually.
The second is where Apple is really asking for it. The more alienated developers feel—especially good developers who're trying to build something new and innovative (as opposed to those looking to join the Fart app gravy train)—the less time they're going to spend playing iPhone App Store roulette. Which means that if you want a phone where you can expect some real innovation, you should probably skip the iPhone.
Apple and AT&T are living dangerously though. Apple has also forced video services like Slingbox to cripple their applications because of purported concerns over data usage, while approving ones from paying partners (e.g. Major League Baseball) that would put more strain on a network than Slingbox's would.
If the iPhone's default applications were better than those submitted by Google or by some other third-party developer, then people would use them. If not, then that's a sign that they need to make them better—not a red flag that they should start pulling apps left and right from the App Store because of "duplication."
At the end of the day, this isn't simply a Google Voice/iPhone problem—it's a concern for everyone, iPhone owner or not, with an interest in the latest and greatest crop of smartphones. Google's Android OS may be open source, but that doesn't mean they're above ! pulling apps when pressured by carriers. Right now the non-iPhone manufacturers and carriers are much more willing to allow anything on their platform because, frankly, they're desperate to get some of the attention the iPhone already has. That doesn't mean that'll always be the case.
Every now and then, we like to go on grumpy, long-winded, opinionated rants. We're far from the definitive voice, and your feelings may differ, so feel free to air your thoughts in the comments.
• 2.16GHz Intel dual-core
• 13.3-inch WXGA, 3.8lbs, .4-.98 inches thick
• 250GB hard drive
• 3GB of memory
• Intel GMA X4500HD (OK, forget that part)
• External USB 8x DVD optical drive
• 3 USBs and memory card reader
• 802.11n and ethernet
• Microsoft Vista Home Premium (forget that part, too)
All-in-all, not a horrible looking little system for the price. Has anyone out there owned an Averatec rig before? [Press Release]
Being seeded to developers as part of a $399 SDK (final units are expected to ship in bulk at $199), the Zii Egg Plaszma is an Android-friendly "handheld computer" that's like an iPod touch beefed up with more than a few popular requests.
Of course, its greatest asset, the option to run the open Android OS (the company offers its own Plaszma OS but that's a bit less exciting), means that the hardware begins to resemble a smartphone without the phone. And I'm surprised on a daily basis that anyone is still buying big iPods that can't make phone calls. [ZiiLabs via GeekyGadgets]
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