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Monday, November 07, 2011

drag2share: LG's thin and mighty P330 laptop surfaces at Korean retailer

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/11/07/lgs-thin-and-mighty-p330-laptop-surfaces-at-korean-retailer/

Remember that LG 13.3-incher we covered back when it was warm? The one that had everything going for it except precise release info? Well, it's finally dragged itself out of the factory and onto the shelves of a Korean retailer. Unfortunately, the Core i7 processor has been replaced by an i5-2435M running at 2.4GHz, but that's hardly a deal breaker -- and it's possible a higher specced variant will eventually see daylight too. The other key credentials are all intact: an NVIDIA GeForce GT555M taking care of the visuals, a 40GB / 640GB SSD and HDD combo for snappier performance, and an IPS display built into an all-metal 1.7kg (3.6-pound) chassis. The price is listed as ₩1,364,000, which converts to a hefty $1,220 -- but we wouldn't be surprised if LG takes that down to below the MBP threshold when the product comes stateside.

LG's thin and mighty P330 laptop surfaces at Korean retailer originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 07 Nov 2011 05:05:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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drag2share: Siri may pose 'competitive threat' to Google, Eric Schmidt tells Senate subcommittee

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/11/07/siri-may-pose-competitive-threat-to-google-eric-schmidt-tells/

Back in September, Google chairman and former CEO Eric Schmidt sat down before a Senate antitrust subcommittee to discuss his company's competitive practices. As you would expect from anyone in his situation, Schmidt spent much of his time defending Mountain View's position atop the search industry, and cited several competitors as evidence of its fair play. The exec's list of "threats" featured some of the usual suspects, including Bing, Yahoo and Amazon, as well as Siri. "Even in the few weeks since the hearing, Apple has launched an entirely new approach to search technology with Siri, its voice-activated search and task-completion service built into the iPhone 4S," he wrote, pointing to a handful of publications that characterized Apple's voice assistant as a "Google Killer" and Cupertino's "entry point" into the search market. "Apple's Siri is a significant development -- a voice-activated means of accessing answers through iPhones that demonstrates the innovations in search," Schmidt explained. "Google has many strong competitors and we sometimes fail to anticipate the competitive threat posed by new methods of accessing information." Granted, it's not terribly surprising to hear Google talk up its competition -- especially before a panel of politicians devoted to rooting out anti-competitive practices. Yet Schmidt's comments do mark a noticeable shift from the stance he assumed last year, when he denied that Apple and Facebook posed a "competitive threat" to Google's search operations. As he admitted, "My statement was clearly wrong." Check out the full hearing at the source link below.

Siri may pose 'competitive threat' to Google, Eric Schmidt tells Senate subcommittee originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 07 Nov 2011 10:23:00 EDT. Plea! se see o ur terms for use of feeds.

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Sunday, November 06, 2011

drag2share: 7 Hotels With Million-Dollar Views Of The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/hotels-with-views-of-macys-thanskgiving-day-parade-11-11

thanksgiving day parade turkey float

The famous Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade is a sight worth seeing -- if you can manage to shove your way through the crowds to get a peek, that is. If you book one of these hotels along the parade route, you could watch the giant balloons and floats from the comfort of your hotel room.

Be warned, though -- many rooms will cost more than three times the normal rates.

This post originally appeared on Oyster.com.

Mandarin Oriental, New York

Average Price: $1,026/avg. per night
Pearls: Rating: 5.0 Pearls
Location: Upper West Side, Manhattan

The Mandarin Oriental is the best choice in the city for luxury travelers who want to celebrate Thanksgiving in style. Premier Central Park View rooms and suites on the 43rd to 54th floors have superb parade views through floor-to-ceiling windows, and guests who book the "Thanksgiving Extra Fun Day" package can watch from the 6,000-square-foot ballroom. (The package also includes a gift of pumpkin taffy, spiced pumpkin seed candy, heirloom apples, sparkling cider, and a third night free).

Park Central Hotel

Average Price: $239/avg. per night
Pearls: Rating: 3.0 Pearls
Location: Midtown West, Manhattan

The massive 935-room Park Central Hotel has parade view rooms at a number of different price points, ranging from the Partial View Select rooms to the Full Parade View rooms. (The partial view rooms are usually corner units, while the more expensive options face 7th avenue.) Guests who book parade-view rooms receive a $100 credit towards the hotel's restaurant, City House.

Sheraton New York Hotel & Towers

Average Price: $325/avg. per night
Pearls: Rating: 3.0 Pearls
Location: Midtown West, Manhattan

The Sheraton's whopping 1,750 rooms have shabby interiors, but those facing 7th Avenue on the 5-20th floors will have great views of the parade. Standard rooms cost a steep $750 for the night of the 24th, but will drop off to $500 for additional nights.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

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drag2share: Motorola Corvair 6-inch Android 2.3 tablet outed, destined for the home automation set?

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/11/05/motorola-corvair-6-inch-android-2-3-tablet-outed-destined-for-t/

There are plenty of WiFi-connected remote control apps for tablets, dongles for IR control and even an IR blaster built into Vizio's tablet, but here's a Motorola slab purpose-built for the coffee table. The Verge has received several pics of the Motorola Corvair (and its packaging), a "dedicated controller for the connected" ...something, which is apparently in testing with unnamed cable companies right now. It's a 6-inch tablet running Android 2.3, that the box shows working as a remote control and apparently mirroring its display on the TV screen. Other notes indicate it's optimized for low cost, packs a healthy 4,000mAh battery, and can communicate with other devices via IR or Zigbee's RF4CE spec (where's Android@Home?). That would line it up perfectly to tie in with home automation systems like the one Motorola and Verizon just launched, as well as potentially provide a sweet platform for content discovery. The only downside? Unless Moto goes against type, this will probably never see retail and we'll have to wait on our cable company to figure out a way to charge extra for one and slap their own ugly software on it -- here's hoping that's not the case.

Motorola Corvair 6-inch Android 2.3 tablet outed, destined for the home automation set? originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 05 Nov 2011 16:57:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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drag2share: Dell Latitude S tablet available for pre-order, might just arrive before Christmas

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/11/05/dell-latitude-s-tablet-available-for-pre-order-might-just-arriv/

Serving as further evidence that the stylus really is back, Dell's coy enterprise slate, the Latitude S is now available for pre-order with an estimated delivery date of November 29th and an $859 price tag. If your too impatient to wait for Windows 8, this one's sporting Microsoft's seventh generation, weighs a hefty 816g -- nearly twice as much as the BlackBerry PlayBook -- and contains a 1.5GHz Intel Atom Z670 processor. If you like your tablets with a little extra heft and something extra to poke around with, hit the source link below.

[Thanks, Jon]

Dell Latitude S tablet available for pre-order, might just arrive before Christmas originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 05 Nov 2011 23:56:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Saturday, November 05, 2011

drag2share: Get SMS Delivery Confirmations on Your iPhone Pushed to You [IPhone Downloads]

Source: http://lifehacker.com/5856516/get-sms-delivery-confirmations-on-your-iphone-pushed-to-you

Get SMS Delivery Confirmations on Your iPhone Pushed to You iOS (Jailbroken): If you've ever texted from an area with spotty cell reception, you'll notice that the iPhone doesn't ever tell you if an SMS has failed—it just expects you to check back in a few minutes to confirm the message went through. That's annoying. With SMSConfirmation, you can get notifications that your message actually has been sent.

I would imagine it'd get equally annoying to get delivery notifications for every single text you ever send, which is what's going to happen, because SMSConfirmation doesn't have an on-off switch. To disable it you have to completely uninstall the Cydia tweak. Still, if you're often losing texts and having to go back and re-send them, it's very useful.

SMSConfirmation: Get Push Notifications For SMS Delivery Report On iPhone | Addictive Tips

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drag2share: Hack an Ikea Solar Lamp to Charge an iPad [Weekend Project]

Source: http://lifehacker.com/5856674/hack-an-ikea-solar-lamp-to-charge-an-ipad

Hack an Ikea Solar Lamp to Charge an iPad In the past we've covered how to turn the inexpensive Ikea Sunnan solar lamp into a solar display case and today we have a hack from electronics manufacturer Voltaic Systems to turn the same lamp into a solar charging station for an iPad or other power-hungry phone or tablet.

This hack is actually three mini-hacks rolled into one—Voltaic shows how to replace the low-capacity rechargeable batteries in the lamp's battery pack with larger batteries, mod the lamp to accept additional external solar panels, and adding a modified Minty Boost charging circuit to allow devices to pull up to 1 Amp of electricity.

When these three mini-hacks are combined you will have upgraded a novelty lamp into a robust charging station that can charge smart phones and tablets much more quickly than the tiny solar panel included on the lamp. This project will require around $50 and is accessible for beginner electronics hobbyists who know how to solder.

Mod the IKEA Sunnan to Charge an iPad 2 | Voltaic Systems

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drag2share: The Tegra 3 Is Naked [Guts]

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5856160/the-tegra-3-is-naked

The Tegra 3 Is Naked While we're all waiting to play with tablets running on Nvidia's smokey quad-core wonder, Wireless Goodness got its mitts on photos of the chip in the flesh.

It looks pretty much like any other chip, sure—but pause for a minute and consider just how much is lying underneath there: four graphics-socking cores, plus a slower, secret core for menial tasks. You'll never see it, sealed up inside your next tablet (maybe), but don't take for granted much we can put on silicon these days. [Wireless Goodness via Engadget]

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drag2share: Verizon to offer APIs to give your data rate an on-demand boost, for a price

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/11/04/verizon-to-offer-apis-to-give-your-data-rate-an-on-demand-boost/

There's a ton of data-dependent apps these days, and with services like iCloud and Spotify gaining steam, your precious bytes of data can get bogged down with all the additional traffic. Help is on the way for Verizon customers, however, as the company plans to release an API that will allow users to speed up their connection at will from within apps. This network optimization API will be joined by a microtransaction API (developed in conjunction with Vodafone) to make sure Big Red gets paid for every bit of bandwidth nitro you ask for. Work on the APIs is ongoing at VZW's Innovation Center in San Francisco, but neither API will be ready for prime time until next year. That's a long time to wait, but the idea of improving our data connection at the press of a button has us positively giddy. What about you?

Verizon to offer APIs to give your data rate an on-demand boost, for a price originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 04 Nov 2011 23:05:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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drag2share: Sony's new 0.7-inch OLED microdisplay packs 720p resolution, has EVFs in its sights

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/11/05/sonys-new-0-7-inch-oled-microdisplay-packs-720p-resolution-has/

Say howdy to Sony's ECX332A! Excited? We'll, if you're into shooting DSLR video using electronic viewfinders, you might be. This new OLED microdisplay measures in it a mere 0.7-inches, managing an HD resolution of 1280 x 720. As understood by OLED-Info, it features "the same white OLED and color-filters architecture" as the ECX331A (far left), which is the 0.5-inch, 1024 × 768 XGA variant Sony's implemented inside of the EVFs found on its NEX-5N and A77 cameras, among others. Notably, it'll likely be a pleasure to look through with a brightness level rated at 200 cd/m2 and a peppy response time of 0.01ms. There's no word on what future Sony shooters we can expect to find the ECX332A in, but if you're curious for more details -- and well-versed in kana -- hit that source link below.

Sony's new 0.7-inch OLED microdisplay packs 720p resolution, has EVFs in its sights originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 05 Nov 2011 01:12:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Friday, November 04, 2011

drag2share: Surprise: Android Smartphones Can Stream to Appleâs AirPlay Speakers [Android Apps]

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5856415/surprise-android-smartphones-can-stream-to-apples-airplay-speakers

Surprise: Android Smartphones Can Stream to Appleâs AirPlay Speakers The Eye-C Taglists app for Google Android can stream to Apple's AirPlay devices.

Apple's Airplay, a proprietary method for zapping music all through your house without running wires everywhere, is expanding beyond the realm of iOS devices. Could it be on its way to becoming an industry standard - one that would allow Apple to charge the same sort of licensing fees for wireless music connections that it does today for speaker docks and other devices that connect to its proprietary iPhone/iPod/iPad slots?

We first spotted this trend in MOG's Mac app, which can send tunes to AirPlay-capable speakers and stereo systems as well as Apple's own AirPort Express and Apple TV, without requiring a workaround like Rogue Amoeba AirFoil.

Now, Eyecon Resources has taken things to the next level with an Android media player app that can send music to Apple's AirPlay devices, as well as anything that supports DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance).

Eye-C for Android and iPhone, released on Tuesday, let users create shareable "Taglists" out of music, photos, and videos on SoundCloud, YouTube, Picasa, Facebook, or their own music libraries. But for now, what interests us is the Android version's magical ability to send music to AirPlay devices. After all, Android and iOS are bitter enemies.

Evolver.fm asked Eye-C vice president of marketing Alec Marshall, who holds the patent for the app and used to work on Apple's iTunes team, how the Eye-C team managed to send music from Google-powered phones to Apple-powered devices.

"Our team has about two years experience developing for connected home systems, including local media server systems and DLNA and Airplay networks," explained Marshall. "I'd imagine building the Android feature would be extremely difficult for an organization that didn't come from a background similar to ours."

Difficult, but not impossible.

"What Android users can expect is a very clean way to play music and video from their phone to both DLNA and Airplay devices," he added. "Apple is putting a lot of work into expanding AirPlay support, and I'd expect to see growth in this space – we're already noticing a significant increase in home theater receivers, iPod docks, and other devices that aren't manufactured by Apple but that do connect to AirPlay networks. This new feature allows Android users an opportunity to get in on this easy-to-use connected home system, playing music and video to systems that sound great."

We agree that the future is rosy for AirPlay. If you thought the iPod speaker dock market was huge over the past ten years, just wait until the idea of zapping music wirelessly from smartphones and tablets to televisions, speakers, and sound systems all over the house becomes similarly mainstream.

The big question: With Apple poised to dominate yet another area of digital music, why is Google sleeping on Fling?

Evolver.fm observes, tracks and analyzes the music apps scene, with the belief that it's crucial to how humans experience music, and how that experience is evolving.

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drag2share: Transformer Prime gets mysteriously and imperiously benchmarked

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/11/04/transformer-prime-gets-mysteriously-and-imperiously-benchmarked/

We're getting restless waiting for the Transformer Prime, which is why we'll cling to the meagerest gossip about its performance. Speaking of which, a couple of Asus Eee Pad TF201 devices have cropped up on the AnTuTu benchmarking app, parading scores that apparently crown them lords of the Android mountain. The graph shows a standard 1.4GHz tablet, but the highest result actually purports to come from a Transformer Prime clocked at 1.6GHz, which achieved 12872. By comparison, the top Transformer TF101 score is just 7596. Benchmarks are hard to verify and even harder to translate into real-world talent, but at least our Kal-El hunger has been sated for a while. Nope, there it is again.

[Thanks, Timlot]

Transformer Prime gets mysteriously and imperiously benchmarked originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 04 Nov 2011 10:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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drag2share: Kinect for Windows SDK beta 2 out now, celebratory celebrations cleared to commence

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/11/04/kinect-for-windows-sdk-beta-2-out-now-celebratory-celebrations/

It's only been a few months, but already the Kinect for Windows SDK beta is moving from stage uno to stage dos. (That's one and two, vaqueros.) Microsoft's outing it in commemoration of the Kinect's one-year anniversary, and it's also launching a Kinect for Windows site and blog, too. We're told that the Kinect for Windows commercial program is still on track for an early 2012 launch, and to date, some 200 companies have agreed to take part in the pilot program. Ask for the beta 2 piece, the refreshed build includes "faster skeletal tracking, a better accuracy rate when it comes to skeletal tracking and joint recognition, and the ability to plug and unplug your Kinect without losing work / productivity." Hit the source links to get your download on, but be warned -- we've seen it off and on throughout the day.

Kinect for Windows SDK beta 2 out now, celebratory celebrations cleared to commence originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 04 Nov 2011 10:24:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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drag2share: Fujitsu's 10.51 petaflop K supercomputer is fastest in the world

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/11/04/fujitsus-10-51-petaflop-k-supercomputer-is-fastest-in-the-world/

Fujitsu, sweaty palmed from the construction of the K supercomputer, swore the colossal machine would manage a speed of ten petaflops by the year 2012. The effort has paid off handsomely: the hangar-sized machine has a top speed of 10.51. If you wanted to duplicate that setup at home, you'd only need 864 racks, 88,128 processors and enough cash in your back pocket to front an annual electricity bill of $10 million a year. The company will be spilling all at November's SC11 conference in Seattle, where the K will cement its position as the fastest computer in the world. One last thing -- we have a hunch that this machine can just about play Crysis.

Fujitsu's 10.51 petaflop K supercomputer is fastest in the world originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 04 Nov 2011 11:28:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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drag2share: OCZ expects to ship cheap TLC solid state drives in early 2012

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/11/04/ocz-expects-to-ship-cheap-tlc-solid-state-drives-in-early-2012/

It's about time triple-level-cell NAND came to life in consumer products and it looks like OCZ is blazing that trail. The company expects to release its first TLC drive early next year, with a vaunted 30 percent price reduction compared to current MLC drives, which are themselves much cheaper than SLC. The downside is shorter life expectancy, which will be as low as four years, but more durable forms of the technology are due to arrive later in 2012.

OCZ expects to ship cheap TLC solid state drives in early 2012 originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 04 Nov 2011 11:42:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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