Sleep as an Droid Wakes You Up Gently at Your Best Time [Downloads]

Source: http://lifehacker.com/#!5760593/sleep-as-a-droid-wakes-you-up-gently-at-your-best-time

Android: You're the mayor of New York, you have super powers, this donut tastes incredible, and then, then—the terrible, awful digital rooster sound. Wake up easier, and with better timing, with this clever customized Android alarm app.

Sleep as an Droid ("Sleep as an Android"—get it?) this app has soothing sounds to wake up to, that can fade in gradually—a nice feature, in itself. But the real benefit of Sleep as an Droid is keeping it on your mattress, so it can measure your movements and get a sense of your sleep cycles. It also logs your sleeping hours, so you can see just how far you're falling behind in the quest for a good night's rest.

With that movement analysis in place, the Sleep app suggests better wake-up times from the data it collects. This might not work for everyone, but you've got 14 days to try it out for free, before you'd need to pony up a small $1.34 (currently) for the unlocked version.

Sleep as an Droid [Android Market via Droid Life]

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SearchReviews Lets You Read Tons of Product Reviews by Scanning Barcodes with Your Phone [Downloads]

Source: http://lifehacker.com/#!5761411/searchreviews-lets-you-read-tons-of-product-reviews-by-scanning-barcodes-with-your-phone

iPhone/Android/web: There's no shortage of product review aggregators on the net, but new service SearchReviews adds a convenient feature to the formula: Now you can just scan a product's barcode with your phone to read reviews from all around the web.

Search Reviews is an incredibly simple app: just open it up, search for a product, or scan a product's bar code with your phone, and it will return to you a very long list of product reviews. It doesn't give you a ton of control over where you grab those reviews, nor how you sort them, but its beauty is in its simplicity. If you neglected to do your product research before visiting the store (or didn't foresee the options you'd have once you got there), it's a really nice, quick way to see if a specific product has any popular issues or unhappy customers.

Search reviews is a free service on the web, as well as a free download for iOS and Android devices.

SearchReviews [via TechCrunch]

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You can contact Whitson Gordon, the author of this post, at whitson@lifehacker.com. You can also follow him on Twitter and Facebook.
 

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Be Aware of the "Unit Effect" to Avoid Marketing Tricks [Mind Hacks]

Source: http://lifehacker.com/#!5761667/be-aware-of-the-unit-effect-to-avoid-marketing-tricks

We've shown you one way in which numbers can play tricks with our heads, and researchers have just found another, that shows we prefer larger numbers—even when they're equal to a smaller number of a different unit.

The "unit effect", as it's called, says that even if you're aware of the units in a measurement, your mind will still put more emphasis on the size of a number, rather than the value it carries:

Consumers will readily attach weight to completely fictitious product statistics, preferring items with the most bogomips, even if they have no idea of what the significance of that figure is. That may be disappointing, but apparently it's even worse than that-even when they do know what the units are, people tend to prefer a bigger number. As a newly released study shows, people would rather pay for expedited service to get things in 31 days than they would to get it in one month.

Of course its counter-intuitive, but if you aren't actively converting that measurement to other units, you aren't aware of your biases. Of course, as soon as you become aware of these biases, the unit effect goes away—so the next time you're told something will, say, ship in 31 days, do a quick check in your brain to see if that fits another familiar unit that casts a different light on the result. You may find you escape some marketing tricks by doing so. Hit the link to read more. Photo by Biking Nikon OGG.

The "Unit Effect" Makes 31 Days Seem Better Than a Month [Ars Technica]

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You can contact Whitson Gordon, the author of this post, at whitson@lifehacker.com. You can also follow him on Twitter and Facebook.
 

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Renesas Wins DivX Plus HD Certification, For MKV Files on Your Phone [Smartphones]

Source: http://gizmodo.com/#!5761740/renesas-wins-divx-plus-hd-certification-for-mkv-files-on-your-phone

The DivX Corporation has awarded its first DivX Plus HD certificate to Renesas Mobile, producer of several HD-capable system-on-chip processors. Any phone that features Renesas Mobile's SH73704 will therefore be able to manage full HD 1080p playback, including the popular HD content ripping format MKV. In this age of ever-growing screens, that has to be a good selling point.

The announcement hasn't hit the press sites of the companies concerned as yet, so here's a cut & paste for you:

Renesas Mobile's Full-HD Capable Application Achieves DivX Certification as World's First DivX Plus™ HD System-on-Chip

Enables DivX Plus™ HD 1080p video playback and easy transfer to millions DivX devices without conversion

Barcelona, Spain– February 16, 2011 – DivX®, a division of Sonic Solutions® (NASDAQ: SNIC) today announced that Renesas Mobile Corporation's full-HD capable application processor SH-Mobile MT1 (SH73704) is the world's first mobile system-on-chip (SoC) to be awarded DivX Plus™ HD Certification. Smartphones with Renesas Mobile's SoC will deliver full HD 1080 playback of DivX Plus HD videos including MKV files.

"DivX Plus HD is our premium level of certification, and it's a testament to Renesas Mobile's technology leadership that they are the first integrated circuit company to achieve our most comprehensive standards for HD video playback on a mobile phone," said Matt Milne, Executive Vice President and General Manager, DivX. "By partnering with an innovator like Renesas Mobile that supplies technology to a range of top-tier device manufacturers, we'll help ensure more consumers can watch the highest quality DivX videos at home or on the go."

"Smartphone technology is transforming exponentially, and adding DivX Plus HD Certification helps us enhance the advantages of our application processor product line," said Kazuhiko Yoshimatsu, Department Manager, Mobile Platform Marketing Department, Renesas Mobile Corporation. "Together with DivX we can better help our mobile OEM customers quickly implement an end-to-end solution for the high-quality playback of DivX HD videos and secure premium content. We also look forward to integrating DivX technology on our new integrated application processor line, 'R-Mobile,' which is under development."

To enjoy DivX videos on mobile devices with Renesas Mobile's SH-Mobile MT1, consumers can seamlessly load their video libraries of both standard definition and HD 1080p files directly on any DivX Certified device without conversion. In addition, all DivX Certified mobile phones support the playback of Hollywood studio movies from leading retailers in the DivX® format.

DivX Plus HD Certification is the most comprehensive level of certification available from DivX, awarded to consumer electronics products supporting the optimized playback of all content created with DivX software. Available on www.divx.com, DivX Plus Software allows users to create and playback H.264 video in an .mkv file container. DivX Plus HD Certified devices will playback all previous versions of DivX video and DivX Plus HD video files with the .mkv file extension and AAC audio created with third-party tools.

The Renesas Mobile SH-Mobile was designed to offload application processing from the baseband LSI, ease system development and realize significant performance improvement. SH-Mobile enables separation of the application software and communications protocol software developments. This baseband independent approach reduces time-to-market, and allows rapid evolution of multimedia applications whilst retaining investment in established communications protocol software. The SH73704 performs video processing at full HD (1,920 × 1,080 pixels) resolution, as well as functions such as noise reduction and audio processing (5.1-channel/2-channel), while maintaining low power consumption.

Known for great performance, visual quality, and interoperability on any DivX Certified device, DivX provides consumers with a comprehensive digital media solution supporting the majority of high-quality Internet video on their TVs or other consumer electronics devices. All DivX devices contain proprietary digital rights management technology and are capable of playing back premium movies in the DivX format from major studios. Global online retailers offering titles in the DivX format include WB Shop, Media Markt, Film Fresh, and Best Buy's CinemaNow, which is powered by RoxioNow™.

DivX creates, distributes, and licenses digital video technologies that span the "three screens" comprising today's consumer media environment - the PC, television, and mobile devices. Over 400 million DivX devices have shipped into the market worldwide from leading consumer electronics manufacturers. DivX also offers content providers and publishers a complete solution for the distribution of secure, high-quality digital video content. Driven by a globally recognized brand and a passionate community of hundreds of millions of consumers, DivX is simplifying the video experience to enable the digital home.

For more information about Renesas Mobile, visit www.renesasmobile.com

For more information about DivX, visit www.divx.com

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Samsung 9 Series laptops to include 11.6-inch model?

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/15/samsung-9-series-laptops-to-include-11-6-inch-model/

Samsung managed to impress us back at CES with its ultrathin 9 Series laptop but, as far as we knew at the time, the company was only planning to produce a 13.3-inch version of it. If a listing from online retailer Provantange is any indication though, it looks like there could also be a 11.6-inch model in the pipeline. While there's no indication of a release date, the specs do seem to suggest that this is something more than a typo, as they include in a Core i3 processor instead of the i5 on the 13-incher, 2GB of RAM, a 64GB SSD, and the same 1,366 x 768 resolution as its larger counterpart but a lower 340 nits brightness. As you can see above, it also lists a price of just under $1,200, which would place it about $400 less than the 13.3-inch model.

[Thanks, Vikram]

Samsung 9 Series laptops to include 11.6-inch model? originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 15 Feb 2011 18:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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