Dr. Augustine Fou's Online Scrapbook

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Instapaper for iPad Will Sell a Lot of iPads [IPad Apps]

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5500629/instapaper-for-ipad-will-sell-a-lot-of-ipads

Instapaper for iPad Will Sell a Lot of iPads If you like saving long, interesting articles you find during your internet travels for later, you probably already use Instapaper on your iPhone or Kindle. But boy does it look beautiful on the iPad.

Instapaper for iPad Will Sell a Lot of iPads For the uninitiated, Instapaper is a service that allows you to save articles on the internet for later. You put a little "Read Later" bookmarklet in your browser toolbar, and when you click it the article is beamed to your account for reading later on your device or in your browser, stripped of clutter and reduced to the plan text.

Instapaper developer Marco Arment decided to aim to have Instapaper all iPad-ready by day one (or as close to day one as possible), so he's already showing off how it'll look. And while it's a pretty straightforward adjustment of the iPhone app, it just looks right on the iPad. This sort of app is exactly what tablets were made for.

If you've got Instapaper Pro on the iPhone already, you'll get it on the iPad for free, too. Not too shabby. Be sure to check out the Instapaper Blog for more details on the app and the iPad development process, if you're interested in that sort of thing. [Instapaper Blog via Nick Bilton]

Dell Aero Hands On: The Lightest Android Phone Yet [Dell]

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5500630/dell-aero-hands-on-the-lightest-android-phone-yet

Dell Aero Hands On: The Lightest Android Phone Yet The good news: I got to an up close look with the Dell Aero, AT&T's second Android handset and Dell's first in the US. The less good news: AT&T's not letting anyone actually see it work. Hrmm?

Here's what we do know about the interface: it's Android 1.5, like AT&T's other Android phone, the Backflip. That's a bit disappointing, although the Dell rep we spoke to indicated that it would get a proper 2.1 update before long. Other confirmed specs almost made up for it: the Aero's going to ship with a 5MP camera and a 2GB microSD card, and will have a multitouch capacitive screen..

How much of a factor Android 1.5 is going to be depends largely on what kind of custom skin Dell's going to layer over it. According to the rep, it's going to be very similar to the one they currently use in Asia, which looks a little something like this:

As for the form factor, the main thing to know is that it's light. The lightest Android phone, in fact, but it achieves that effect without feeling cheaply made.

It would be nice to know more—price, for one, and on-board storage—but we should be finding those things out sooner than later, as the Aero's expected to ship within the next few months.

Exclusive: First Look at Slacker's Excellent On-Demand Music Service [Slacker]

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5500674/exclusive-first-look-at-slackers-excellent-on+demand-music-service

We first caught wind of Slacker Radio's plans for a subscription on-demand music service a few weeks ago, and it sounded vague but promising. Now, having seen it in action, I can say with certainty that it's loaded with potential.

What Slacker's planning to release in the coming months is a fully browsable on-demand service that puts its entire catalog of nearly three million songs at your fingertips. Using Slacker's internet radio interface as a jumping off point, you can sort through tracks, artists, and albums within a genre either by popularity or alphabetically.
Once you've found something you're interested in, you're greeted with artist information, and the option to either play the entire album or to select a specific track.

Even better: you can also create playlists that can be accessed whenever you want for however long you want. As of now there's no planned limit to playlist length, although there will inevitably be some (very high) cap due to caching limitations.

Slacker will also apply its radio technology to your playlist if you so choose, intelligently ordering tracks like your own personal DJ. And a separate "My Favorites" list is automatically kept based on how you rate songs through the course of using Slacker.

Slacker's on demand service will also feature something generally sorely missing from internet radio: a Back button that lets you listen to previous songs in a given station's rotation or in your playlist. It may seem like a minor point, but it's an essential one for the fully on-demand experience that Slacker's promising.

The interface I saw today was a little sluggish at times, but it's still in the late development stages and the person I talked to was confident that it would be faster by its release. There aren't any specifics on pricing yet, unfortunately, other than that it will be "very competitive" with other similar offerings.

Slacker users will only need to download one app that will work for every piece of service. That is to say, a free option will still be available, but free Slacker users will be able to upgrade at any time to the on-demand subscription model.

All in all, Slacker's is a wonderfully intuitive approach to on-demand internet radio, and really does give you an incredible music library to play with as you please. Is it worth the money? That depends on what it'll cost. But assuming the pricing is halfway reasonable, there's clearly a lot of value in what Slacker is offering.

Origin's Eon15 gaming laptop offers less bang, saves more buck

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/23/origins-eon15-gaming-laptop-offers-less-bang-saves-more-buck/

While some high-profile custom PC vendors are on their way out, Origin PC is just getting started. The company recently launched the Genesis, a desktop that melts gamers' faces at the same time it incinerates their wallets, and the Eon18, a laptop that... honestly does just the same. Come to think of it, flame seems to be a recurring theme for the company, but before you work yourself into a burning hot rage because of your inability to afford Origin product, consider the new Eon15. With only room for a single powerful mobile graphics chip and a single storage drive, it won't be setting new 3DMark or I/O benchmarks like its cousins, but it will let you get away with a 1080p screen, Core i7-820QM processor, up to 8GB of DDR3 memory, a GeForce GTX 285M and even a snazzy paint job for a merely painful, rather than excruciating, price. Configurations start at $1,900 -- hey, it's not like you were gonna be using those paychecks for anything else, right?

Origin's Eon15 gaming laptop offers less bang, saves more buck originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 23 Mar 2010 23:46:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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HP EliteBook 8740w pumped up with Intel Core 2010 CPUs, ATI / NVIDIA graphics

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/24/hp-elitebook-8740w-pumped-up-with-intel-core-2010-cpus-ati-nv/

Fear not mobile workstation lovers, it may have taken HP a bit more time to refresh its 17-inch EliteBook 8740w, but it's officially here now and ready to champ at the bit with a combo of cutting edge features / specs. We'll start with the externals first -- the 7.8-pound, magnesium-alloy chassis is covered in the same gunmetal finish as the other recently-announced Elitebooks, and the 17-inch HP Dreamcolor screen is nothing short of stunning. It has 64 times the colors of other displays and can be ordered with HP's Mobile Display Assistant color calibrator. Inside the workstation is rather frightful -- it can be configured with a choice of Intel Core i5 or i7 processors and [either] ATI 's newest FirePro M7820 or NVIDIA Quadro FX GPUs. While the 8740w starts at $1,999, the $3,899 spec'd version happens to be HP's most powerful mobile workstation ever with a quad-core Core i7 processor, 7,200rpm 320GB hard drive, and NVIDIA Quadtro FX 3800M graphics with 1GB of DDR3 RAM. We were told that the 8740w would be shipping in early April, but it appears that you can order them up right now at the source link.

HP EliteBook 8740w pumped up with Intel Core 2010 CPUs, ATI / NVIDIA graphics originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 24 Mar 2010 00:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Corsair's 100GB Force SSD scorches the test bench with its blazing speed

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/24/corsairs-100gb-force-ssd-scorches-the-test-bench-with-its-blazi/

The name's Force, SandForce. Corsair's making it kinda easy on us to spot its first SandForce-controlled SSD, and there's no reason it should be bashful about it, given that the SF-1500 is currently the fastest SSD processor around. The F100 in question has the SF-1200 onboard, offering a lesser 285MBps read and 275MBps writes (oh, such measly specs!), but that also means you might, might, actually find a way to afford one. The TweakTown crew took one for a spin recently and were happily surprised to find little in the way of performance difference between SandForce's supposedly enterprise-class SF-1500 and consumer-class SF-1200 -- both sped ahead of the Intel X25-M G2 and Indilinx Barefoot-controlled drives. The speed conclusion was clear cut, and with pricing for the 100GB F100 projected to be as low as $400, the value proposition doesn't look too bad either. The 200GB variant is expected to land somewhere around $700 when Corsair's Force SSDs make it out to retail in a few days' time.

Corsair's 100GB Force SSD scorches the test bench with its blazing speed originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 24 Mar 2010 03:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Tromso students put together the best interactive display wall we've seen yet (video)

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/24/tromso-students-put-together-the-best-interactive-display-wall-w/

Take everything you thought you knew about multitouch and throw it out. Okay, keep the Minority Report stuff, but throw everything else out. What we're looking at here is a 22 megapixel display, stitched together from the output of no less than 28 projectors (7,168 x 3,072 total resolution), which just happens to respond to touch-like input in a fashion even Tom Cruise would find fascinating. You don't have to actually touch the wall, floor-mounted cameras pick up your gestures in 2D space and a 30-node computer setup crunches all the computational and visual data to deliver some buttery smooth user interaction. For demo purposes, the makers of this system grabbed a 13.3 gigapixel image of Tromso and took it for a hand-controlled spin. See the mesmerizing show on video after the break.

Continue reading Tromso students put together the best interactive display wall we've seen yet (video)

Tromso students put together the best interactive display wall we've seen yet (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 24 Mar 2010 07:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Nielsen data: you're probably watching too much teevee

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/23/nielsen-data-youre-probably-watching-too-much-teevee/

Nielsen's just released some zingers (also known as statistics) for you to chew on while you listen to a YouTube clip (something about Obamacare) drone on in another tab, tell your significant other to "hold on" and track your Domino's pizza in a completely different tab. The annual Three Screens report, as it's called, has some choice data on American habits, such as the fact that television consumption (average number of hours watched per day) has increased to nearly 35 hours per week per person. What else can we glean from this treasure chest of minutiae? Well, about 59 percent of Americans now multitask in front of the teevee with their laptops for an average of three and a half hours a month. A final interesting tidbit here -- flying in the face of popular wisdom, it seems that the older you are, the more television you're likely to watch -- so keep your eye on your great Aunt Dot, folks: it's possible she might be addicted to Gossip Girl. Hit the source link if you want to download the entire report (it's a PDF).

Nielsen data: you're probably watching too much teevee originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 23 Mar 2010 14:49:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Dell Inspiron Mini 10 with T-Mobile webConnect launches tomorrow, $199.99 on contract

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/23/dell-insprion-mini-10-with-t-mobile-webconnect-launches-tomorrow/

T-Mobile's selected CTIA 2010 this week as the venue to launch its customized version of Dell's Mini 10 netbook that's been infused with -- you guessed it -- T-Mobile-compatible 3G service. It's got a 10.1-inch WSVGA display, 1.3 megapixel webcam, three USB ports, VGA port, Windows 7 Starter Edition, and an Atom N450 core humming along at 1.66GHz with a claimed battery life of "up to" eight hours using a six-cell 56WHr pack. In terms of frequencies, you've got quadband EDGE alongside quadband (yes, quadband) 3G with support for Bands I, II, IV, and V, which means you'll be able to roam in 850 / 1900MHz markets and internationally. It's available starting tomorrow in "select T-Mobile retail locations" in Chicago, Dallas, Miami, and Los Angeles as well as through the carrier's site and sales hotline for $199.99 on a two-year deal.

Dell Inspiron Mini 10 with T-Mobile webConnect launches tomorrow, $199.99 on contract originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 23 Mar 2010 15:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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T-Mobile USA reiterates that 'breadth' of 3G footprint will get HSPA+ this year

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/23/t-mobile-usa-reiterates-that-breadth-of-3g-footprint-will-get/

It's easy for something as grandiose as a national wireless network upgrade to get delayed ad nauseam, so we're happy to hear here in March of 2010 that T-Mobile is still looking to blanket the "breadth" of its existing 3G footprint with 21Mbps HSPA+ service by the end of this year, covering over 100 market areas and about 185 million peeps. That's an extraordinarily aggressive timeline for a carrier that was way, way late to the 3G game, and realistically, it's exactly what they needed to stay competitive in the face of 4G deployments coming down the pike from all of its national competitors -- in fact, they're specifically calling out the deployment as being "4G-like" and touting the fact that they'll be hitting way more pops this year than Sprint's WiMAX network will. Them's fightin' words to be sure, but hey -- competition is extremely healthy when it comes to fast, widely-deployed wireless, isn't it?

T-Mobile USA reiterates that 'breadth' of 3G footprint will get HSPA+ this year originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 23 Mar 2010 19:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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NVIDIA's Optimus uncovered in Sony VAIO Z, along with TRIM support?

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/23/nvidias-optimus-uncovered-in-sony-vaio-z-along-with-trim-suppo/

Sony's illustrious VAIO Z may have a so-called "Dynamic Hybrid Graphics System," but NVIDIA's Optimus it is not. Or is it. Notebook Review's own igorstef started digging deeper within the laptop's switchable GPU setup, and lo and behold, it sure looks as if Optimus is underneath. He went through the painstaking process of installing a slew of new drivers and tweaking some code within select .inf files, and in the end he seemingly found a way to get Optimus drivers working on the new rig. Of course, the debate has been raging on for five pages now, and it still seems inconclusive as to what's really going on behind the scenes. In related news, ZoinksS2k seems to have discovered a way to get Windows 7's TRIM feature working on his SSD-equipped VAIO Z, and if you're interested in doing some tinkering of your own in either case, you know where to dive in.

[Thanks, Bill]

NVIDIA's Optimus uncovered in Sony VAIO Z, along with TRIM support? originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 23 Mar 2010 21:16:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Kyocera Zio M6000 joins burgeoning Android ranks with high-res affordability

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/23/kyocera-zio-m6000-joins-burgeoning-android-ranks-with-high-res-a/

You know your mobile OS is going places when people start resurrecting their smartphone divisions just to throw out their own spin on it. Kyocera's approach with the new Zio M6000 has been to marry an 800 x 480 display to some rather middle of the road components and to sell that package at a significantly lower price point (between $169 and $216 unsubsidized) than most Android-infused communicators on the market. You know, for the people that like to have a handsome high-res phone, but don't need it to have the firepower to run Quake. It's still not a terrible slouch, coming with a 600MHz MSM7227 CPU from Qualcomm, 512MB of onboard app memory, and 3G, WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity. Look out for its US arrival in the second quarter of this year.

Gallery: Kyocera Zio M6000

Kyocera Zio M6000 joins burgeoning Android ranks with high-res affordability originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 23 Mar 2010 12:16:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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'The Panel' rechargeable LED monitor sentences you to a more productive life

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/23/the-panel-rechargeable-led-monitor-sentences-you-to-a-more-pro/

"It would let me set up shop at that posh cafe down the street." That's how you justified your laptop purchase -- but as you sat, gently sipping your macchiato, you realized it would never work without your decidedly non-portable 24-inch Cinema Display's extra real estate. We've been there many a time, and apparently so has a startup named MEDL Technology, which has just finished prototyping the answer to our telecommuting (and portable gaming) woes. Going above and beyond the average, tiny secondary display, "The Panel" is an honest-to-goodness 13.3-inch LED-backlit monitor that's less than an inch thick, but packs incredible connectivity (DVI, VGA, Component, S-Video, mini-HDMI and USB) in addition to a sweet folding stand and up to five hours of rechargeable battery life. MEDL told us that should they secure funding, the firm's looking to launch The Panel in Q4 2010, and is hoping to first sway business users with a sub-$350 price point. To work surrounded by coffee -- without being employed by Starbucks -- that's a small price to pay.

Gallery: METL Technology's 'The Panel' portable monitor