Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Adobe FlashTime to bring peer-to-peer video calls to Android (video)

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/20/adobe-flashtime-to-bring-peer-to-peer-video-calls-to-android-vi/

With tongue wedged firmly in cheek, Adobe has named its latest little bit of demo software FlashTime and given it a quick spin to whet our appetites. Built using the forthcoming Air 2.5, this peer-to-peer video chat client harnesses your smartphone's camera to get some direct visual communication going with your fellow Android lovers. Okay, so Android users already have other options for doing just this very thing, but the point being made here is that you can do just about anything with Flash, and since it's Flash it'll be easy to port around to other platforms. Skip past the break to see the demo, which has a multipeer chat session with a desktop Mac thrown in for good measure.

[Thanks, Faheem]

Update: Just for clarification's sake, Adobe's Mark Doherty got in touch with us to say there are no plans to release this little mockup client and that indeed the FlashTime moniker is a mere placeholder. Ah well.

Continue reading Adobe FlashTime to bring peer-to-peer video calls to Android (video)

Adobe FlashTime to bring peer-to-peer video calls to Android (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 20 Jul 2010 11:52:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sony stereoscopic screen sharing patent puts two players on one display

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/20/sony-stereoscopic-screen-sharing-patent-puts-two-players-on-one/

After that last bummer, where Sony applied for a patent "feature erosion" in game demos, we're glad to see the company come up with something positive for the gamers among us. Two recent patent apps, titled "Stereoscopic Screen Sharing Method and Apparatus Patent" and "3D Shutter Glasses with Mode Switching Based on Orientation to Display Device," detail the use of stereoscopic 3D technology to let two individual players see different information on the same screen (you might remember that Microsoft has also been working on something similar). Not only that, but the glasses could have earbuds -- for separate audio feeds. Of course, you'd need a 3D display for this to work, and you'd need to wear those silly glasses -- but that's a small price to pay to get rid of the ol' split screen, don't you think? [Warning: PDF source links]

Sony stereoscopic screen sharing patent puts two players on one display originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 20 Jul 2010 13:07:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink 3D Vision Blog  |  sourceFree Patents Online (1), (2)  | Email this | Comments

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Samsung Creating Unbreakable AMOLED Screens [AMOLED]

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5591022/samsung-creating-unbreakable-amoled-screens

Samsung Creating Unbreakable AMOLED ScreensSamsung is planning to launch a display with an AMOLED plastic panel on the universal board within two years. Why? Because by switching to the plastic panel, the AMOLED display would become unbreakable.

Samsung's process in making the indestructible screen is to put a thin film transistor (TFT) on the plastic panel and to replace the vinyl protection sheet with polyimide film. Of course, if you drop your phone the glass will still break, but at least you'll have a working touchscreen underneath the shards.

Samsung plans to start producing these new AMOLED screens in two years. Let's hope they can figure out how to make AMOLED readable in the sun by then too. [OLED-display.net]

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Redbox Tries to Take on Netflix by Expanding Beyond DVD Rental Kiosks [War]

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5591153/redbox-tries-to-expand-beyond-dvd-rental-kiosks-and-take-on-netflix

Redbox Tries to Take on Netflix by Expanding Beyond DVD Rental KiosksRedbox, the Coinstar-owned company who puts those nifty DVD rental kiosks everywhere, is apparently plotting how to take down Netflix. Step one: Offer more than 200 or so movies.

The company hopes to achieve their goal by using a web service—which appears to be a direct step into Netflix's territory. It'll have a long way to go though as Netflix currently offers "100,000 titles by mail and 20,000 older films online" and there's plenty of other competition:

Redbox also faces competition from Apple Inc. and Best Buy Co., which sell movie downloads. Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world's largest retailer, bought the Vudu Inc. online entertainment service in February and Sears Holdings Corp., the largest department store owner, said on June 22 it plans to sell and rent movies online through an agreement with Sonic.

An accord with Novato, California-based Sonic would spare Redbox the time and cost of negotiating Web rights with studios, Schackart said. Sonic technology is already in DVD players and TVs, and the company has rights to thousands of movies.

Whatever happens, I just hope that those little Redbox kiosks don't ever disappear. I kinda like seeing them tucked into odd corners. [Bloomberg]

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Intel Atom Joins the Bloodhound Gang [Cars]

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5591442/intel-atom-joins-the-bloodhound-gang

Intel Atom Joins the Bloodhound GangAnother piece of the rocket-powered Bloodhound 1000mph car jigsaw has popped into place, with chip-maker Intel announcing it'll be providing the car's brain. But rather than using the company's top-spec chips, Bloodhound will be powered using cheap Intel Atoms.

At least three Intel Atoms will be controlling Bloodhound's propulsion system, in fact, with two additional processors simply onboard the vehicle to check the work of the first—ensuring everything's reported correctly as the car whooshes past the speed of sound without even getting out of third gear.

Another four Intel Atoms will be helping the driver stay on course. Sounds like the driver's going to have a lot of spare time to tinker with the satnav and radio. [Bloodhound via Techradar]

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MOG Mobile For iPhone and Android Streams 8 Million Songs and Lets You Download 'Em All [Apps]

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5591425/mog-mobile-for-iphone-and-android-streams-8-million-songs-and-lets-you-download-em-all

MOG Mobile For iPhone and Android Streams 8 Million Songs and Lets You Download 'Em AllMOG, the latest entrant into the increasingly competitive world of cloud-based mobile music services, has a combination of features, including unlimited, high-quality downloads from its impressively stocked 8 million song library, that make it's $10/mo. subscription a compelling option.

There's a certain comfort to all-you-can-eat situations—knowing that if you decide to binge, you can do so—and MOG Mobile is the first to truly bring this freedom to cloud-based music, letting users of the $10/mo. service not only stream songs over 3G and Wi-Fi, but download them—as many as they want, from any artist or album—in standard 64 kbps compressed files or high quality 320 kbps ones. And it is a great feeling.

MOG Mobile For iPhone and Android Streams 8 Million Songs and Lets You Download 'Em AllLike Rhapsody and Rdio, MOG has a huge library of music which you can sift through on your phone or computer, jamming to full albums, creating playlists, or, in MOG's case, diving into single-artist radio stations. In my use, MOG's 8 million song library rarely disappointed—for comparison, Rhapsody boasts 10 million—and using MOG's Mobile Music app, I queued up official releases, like Van Dyke Parks' Song Cycle, and not-as-official ones, like Gucci Mane's Mr. Zone 6 mixtape with equal ease.

I found nearly everything I searched for in between, too, though the search optimization wasn't perfect—looking for The-Dream's new album Love King, I was offered Love and Pride by King, Kings of Love, Evil Love by King Daddy, God of Love by The Kingpin, and many others but none of which I was looking for. I did manage to find The-Dream's album in the "new releases" section, though, and when I did, streaming over 3G with the default 64 kbps setting was instantaneous and, despite the compression, sounded quite good.

But MOG differs from those competitors in paying the flat monthly fee lets users download those songs without restriction—as many of them as desired, whichever ones are desired—directly to your smart phone, directly from your smart phone, for playback, say, on an airplane or underground bunker (tough to think of places without Wi-Fi or 3G these days, huh?). You can grab a single song or yank a full album to your device for later listening with one tap (though of course these disappear when you stop paying the monthly fee). This is a big move for MOG; Rhapsody currently only lets users download playlists curated on the computer, and Rdio's buffet download service is still in its invite-only phase. So this is a huge selling point for MOG, and the downloads, in my experience, were snappy and painless.

Tight integration with MOG.com means that you can make playlists on the site that show up on your phone automatically, but you could easily get by without ever going to the website if you were so inclined. Downloading all this stuff straight to your mobile device from your mobile device is a joy, and a smart similar-artist slider lets you discover new music you might right on your phone (in addition to the MOG.com site). MOG's also offers daily recommended albums and radio hits, featured playlists ("summer smoochies"; "who's to blame for emo") and top-played popularity charts.

Another clever feature unique to MOG is its flexible radio stations that can be customized by song. You can pick and play an artist-only radio station—Animal Collective radio, say, is only Animal Collective—and it will populate your music queue with the songs from that station, which than can be browsed, skipped, replayed, or downloaded to your library, just like music you would've searched for. This is a brilliant way to do things—it keeps the playback experience streamlined into one place in the app, and it's just nice to be able to add and remove tracks from the radio station's playlist at will.

MOG Mobile Music launches today on iPhones, iPod Touches and Android devices, and a $10 a month subscription can go a long way to helping you forget about iTunes and syncing music over USB. MOG's iPhone app isn't optimized for background audio or fast-app switching yet, which is a bummer, but the company promises that update's coming in a few weeks. The apps, while perhaps not quite as visually polished as some of the more established ones like Rhapsody, are solid and full featured right out the gate. With cloud-based music services from Google and Apple seeming increasingly inevitable, ones like MOG have to offer some compelling features to grab users in the here and now: all I can eat, right to my phone, is definitely enough to get me interested. [MOG, Mog in iTunes]

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ASUS' 23-inch VG236H 3D monitor gets reviewed: pricey, but a real looker

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/19/asus-23-inch-vg236h-3d-monitor-gets-reviewed-pricey-but-a-rea/

ASUS' VG236H was quietly announced back at CeBIT, but the 23-inch 3D monitor is just now getting around to making itself known to worldwide retailers. On sale now for a penny under $500 (which includes the complete $180 NVIDIA 3D Vision kit), this 1080p display has also managed to hit the test bench over at Hot Hardware. Critics over there found that it was amongst the nicest looking TN (boo) panels out there, and that the third dimension had no issue popping out on command. In fact, they had little to complain about, noting that it "consistently hit the mark in their testing [while producing] a fantastic image, whether it be 2D, 3D, work or play." Granted, it's not like you've too many options when it comes to snagging a 3D LCD, but at least we're hearing this particular one is worth a look (or three).

Continue reading ASUS' 23-inch VG236H 3D monitor gets reviewed: pricey, but a real looker

ASUS' 23-inch VG236H 3D monitor gets reviewed: pricey, but a real looker originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 19 Jul 2010 11:36:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  sourceHot Hardware, Newegg  | Email this | Comments

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How-to: install Pixel Qi's 3Qi display on your netbook (and why it's worth it)

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/19/how-to-install-pixel-qis-3qi-display-on-your-netbook-and-why/

It's hard to believe that it's been almost two and a half years since Pixel Qi spun off from OLPC and promised to bring its dual-mode, power efficient display to laptops, tablets, and e-readers. For those who haven't followed our small obsession with the 3Qi screen technology (shame on you!) it promises the best of both worlds: full-color graphics in a normal LCD mode, but also the ability to turn off the backlight to morph into a grayscale, e-paper like display. And while we've seen it demoed at tradeshows (and more tradeshows!), we haven't been able to get our own grubby hands on the much-lauded display. Until now, of course.

No, the 3Qi display still isn't shipping in any commercially available products, but Pixel Qi is at long last offering a $275 10.1-inch screen replacement kit for netbooks through MakerShed. Needless to say, we jumped -- nay, leaped -- at the chance to finally get the display into our laboratories, roll up our sleeves and get to crankin'. That's right, we got out the screwdriver, wrangled up an old Lenovo IdeaPad S10-2 netbook and swapped in the 3Qi display for Lenovo's glossy panel. You're surely sitting on a metric ton of questions. Was it hard to swap out? Has the screen been everything we've ever fantasized about and more? Is it really 80 percent more power efficient than standard LCDs? We've got plenty of answers as well as a step-by-step how-to after the break.

Continue reading How-to: install Pixel Qi's 3Qi display on your netbook (and why it's worth it)

How-to: install Pixel Qi's 3Qi display on your netbook (and why it's worth it) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 19 Jul 2010 13:35:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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HP files for 'PalmPad' trademark -- a webOS tablet, perhaps?

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/19/hp-files-for-palmpad-trademark-a-webos-tablet/

HP's been extremely direct in saying that it plans to release webOS tablets and other devices in the future, and now that the Palm acquisition is complete, it looks like those plans are starting to move forward -- the company just filed a trademark application for "PalmPad," which certainly sounds like a webOS tablet to us. We don't know much apart from that, but it's certainly an encouraging sign -- and we can't help but feel a twinge of nostalgia for a name that harkens back to the glory days of the PalmPilot. Now we're just wondering when (this fall?), how much, and -- as usual -- what this means for the HP Slate. We'll keep our eyes open.

HP files for 'PalmPad' trademark -- a webOS tablet, perhaps? originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 19 Jul 2010 13:48:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink PreCentral  |  sourceUSPTO  | Email this | Comments

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Sharp keeps going with the Sidekick look, intros FX for AT&T

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/19/sharp-keeps-going-with-the-sidekick-look-intros-fx-for-atandt/

Sharp, you see, hasn't had much luck with its North American phone efforts as of late -- they've made almost all of the now-dead Sidekick series, and the Kin... well, you know how that ended up working out. So on that note, we seriously wish these guys the very best of luck with their first non-Sidekick, non-Kin entry in the US market in as long as we can remember: the FX for AT&T (which looks curiously like a Sidekick, actually). This puppy pairs a touchscreen with a QWERTY slide and just a 2 megapixel camera -- not particularly high-end -- but interestingly also features support for AT&T's FLO TV-based Mobile TV service, making it a nice upgrade for Quickfire users. It'll be available next Sunday, July 25 for $99.99 on contract after $50 mail-in rebate; in the meantime, follow the break for the full press release.

Continue reading Sharp keeps going with the Sidekick look, intros FX for AT&T

Sharp keeps going with the Sidekick look, intros FX for AT&T originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 19 Jul 2010 14:25:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Motorola mini Droid slider caught by Mr. Blurrycam

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/19/motorola-mini-droid-slider-caught-by-mr-blurrycam/

Okay, this one's a complete and very welcome surprise -- some extremely blurry pictures and a quick video of what appears to be a smaller Motorola portrait QWERTY Android slider for Verizon just popped up on the Chinese Hiapk forums -- and yes, it's got the glowing red Droid eye. We're not sure if that means the Droid line is about to get a smaller midrange sibling or what, but Motorola's definitely pushing out some of the more interesting Android form factors lately, and this mini Droid certainly fits right in with the Flipout and the Charm. A couple more shots and the video after the break.

Continue reading Motorola mini Droid slider caught by Mr. Blurrycam

Motorola mini Droid slider caught by Mr. Blurrycam originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 19 Jul 2010 15:03:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Droid 2 being prepared for launch, set to arrive August 23rd?

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/19/droid-2-being-prepared-for-launch-set-to-arrive-august-23rd/

The Droid 2's been leaking out all over the place in the past few weeks, but it looks like it'll be another month before it officially hits shelves -- we just got these shots from a packaging facility that's handling the phone, which puts it right on schedule for that rumored August 23rd launch. We're also told that the phone will definitely ship with an 8GB microSD card, and that pricing appears to be $199 on contract and $599 standalone, although those numbers could change. Just a few short weeks left, we suppose -- although give the rate at which this thing is leaking, we're thinking Motorola and Verizon might do well to push that date up a couple weeks. We'll see.

Droid 2 being prepared for launch, set to arrive August 23rd? originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 19 Jul 2010 15:24:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Aptera co-founder expands Epic Boats beyond boats, spurs hiring spree

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/19/aptera-co-founder-expands-epic-boats-beyond-boats-spurs-hiring/

It certainly looks like Aptera co-founder is Chris Anthony is intent on making a name for himself with his own company, Epic Boats, which has recently be renamed Epic Electric Vehicles to better suit its more ambitious goals. That now includes the announcement of two new land vehicles: the fairly standard looking Epic Amp all terrain vehicle, and the three-wheeled Epic Torque (pictured above), which will reportedly cost around $22,000 and $35,000, respectively, and are both set to go into production this fall at Louisiana-based Caddo Manufacturing. That expansion has also now prompted quite a hiring spree -- the company says it's bringing on 200 new employees immediately and will eventually hire nearly 500 altogether, and adds that the manufacturing should also create about 1,500 indirect job in the area.

Aptera co-founder expands Epic Boats beyond boats, spurs hiring spree originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 19 Jul 2010 15:44:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Autoblog Green  |  sourceEpic Electric Vehicles  | Email this | Comments

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Pandigital PhotoLink portable scanner review

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/19/pandigital-photolink-portable-scanner-review/

If you're anything like us, you may find yourself in need of scanning in a few last-minute receipts for reimbursement. Or maybe your oldest youngster left his essay sitting on the kitchen table, and you need to shoot him / her over a PDF on the double. Or maybe you've just got way too many tax-related documents cluttering up your basement. Point is, just about anyone could find a reason or two to invest in a scanner, and Pandigital's making things a lot easier with the PhotoLink personal photo scanner / converter. The $149.99 device was launched last week, and we've been toying with it a few days here at Engadget HQ. If you've been on the fence about buying a portable scanner, join us after the break for a few impressions along with a riveting video of this thing... well, scanning.

Continue reading Pandigital PhotoLink portable scanner review

Pandigital PhotoLink portable scanner review originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 19 Jul 2010 17:13:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Some Droid X handsets have defective screens? (video)

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/19/some-droid-x-handsets-have-defective-screens-video/

All's not well in Creepy Red Eye land, if reports out of several cell phone forums can be believed -- a number of early Droid X adopters are documenting serious graphical or possibly electrical problems with the handset's giant screen. While we don't know how widespread the issue might be quite yet, symptoms include rapid flickering and vertical banding over all or part of the 4.3-inch LCD. Several forumites claim to have already had their phones replaced, in some cases being told the defect was a common problem in their respective launch day batches. We've contacted Verizon for confirmation and hope to have a response soon; in the meanwhile, see video examples of both issues after the break, and let us know if you've seen similar glitches in comments below.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Continue reading Some Droid X handsets have defective screens? (video)

Some Droid X handsets have defective screens? (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 19 Jul 2010 22:25:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  sourceHoward Forums, Motorola Forums, Droid Forums (1), (2)  | Email this | Comments

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