Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/05/24/asus-transformer-pad-tf300tl-hits-the-fcc/
ASUS Transformer Pad TF300TL hits the FCC with AT&T-friendly LTE originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 24 May 2012 20:51:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/05/24/nvidia-teases-grey-soc-with-built-in-lte/
We're nearly halfway through 2012, but for NVIDIA, it seems the best is yet to come. The company's GM, Mike Rayfield, announced today that 30 smartphones with Tegra 3 chips are now slated for availability this year, which is double the success that the company had with its Tegra 2 platform during 2011. Perhaps more interesting, Rayfield also let it be known that the Grey platform -- not due for arrival until next year -- will be the first of NVIDIA's system-on-chip designs to include a built-in LTE radio. Specifically, we can expect it to include the Icera 500, a next-gen LTE modem that's set to supersede both the Icera 410 and 450 designs. The Icera 500 will initially debut as a standalone unit, but will later be integrated into the Grey platform. All things considered, perhaps its 2013 that NVIDIA should be most excited about.
NVIDIA touts 30 Tegra 3 smartphones set for this year, teases next-gen Grey SoC with on-board LTE originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 24 May 2012 21:14:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/05/25/mit-jet-injector-needleless-injection/
Afraid of needles? You may not have to be if a team of MIT scientists get their way. Researchers in the Department of Mechanical Engineering are developing a jet-injection device (similar to this one) that allows professionals to pump you full of meds without poking you with a needle. The key to puncture free pharmaceuticals is pressure -- the device uses a Lorenz Force actuator to push medicine out of an opening about the diameter of a mosquito's proboscis. The nozzle pulls liquids out just as fast and efficiently as it administers them, researchers say, and can even deliver powder-based drugs as if they were a liquid, thanks to a bit of supersonic trickery. This tech could be a boon to healthcare workers who get pricked on the job or patients who get daily insulin shots. Promises of painless inoculations piquing your interest? Hit the video after the break to see how its done.
Continue reading MIT's needleless injections help you get drugs faster, doesn't even hurt (video)
MIT's needleless injections help you get drugs faster, doesn't even hurt (video) originally appeare! d on Engadget on Fri, 25 May 2012 04:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/05/25/leap-motion-gesture-control-technology-hands-on/
Leap Motion unveiled its new gesture control technology earlier this week, along with videos showing the system tracking ten fingers with ease and a single digit slicing and dicing a grocery store's worth of produce in Fruit Ninja. Still, doubts persisted as to the veracity of the claim that the Leap is 200 times more accurate than existing tech. So, we decided to head up to San Francisco to talk with the men behind Leap, David Holz and Michael Buckwald, and see it for ourselves. Join us after the break to learn a bit more about Leap, our impressions of the technology, and a video of the thing in action.
Continue reading Leap Motion gesture control technology hands-on
Leap Motion gesture control technology hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 25 May 2012 08:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Source: http://gizmodo.com/5912896/why-wont-twitter-tweet-these-tweets
Until just moments ago, I, like you (probably), had been naive to this snafu. It was Former Gizmodian John Herrman who shed light on the situation.
The "get" glitch, as it were, is actually an anachronism from an earlier iteration of Twitter as an SMS service. There are others, too. A whole list of text commands exists to this day, from which weird Twitter traps can be deployed.
Among them:
•WHOIS [username] - retrieves the profile information for any public user on Twitter. Example: whois jack or w jack, for short.
•HELP - texting help or info to Twitter will bring up helpful tips.
and, of course...
•GET [username] - retrieves the latest Twitter update posted by that person. You can also use g [username] to get a user's latest Tweet. Examples: get goldman or g goldman.
That the "get" command lives on is both surprising and not at all; get + ______ is such a seemingly common word pairing, but alone not enough to constitute an entire Tweet. (I guess?)
There are definitely other code artifacts elsewhere, besides on Twitter, but right now none come to mind. Do you know of any more like this? [BuzzFeed]
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/05/24/olympus-75mm-f-1-8-micro-four-thirds/
During our first encounter with the OM-D E-M5 in February, Olympus told us to expect several more lenses to launch throughout the year, including a 75mm f/1.8 variant suitable for portraits and a splash- and dust-proof 60mm f/2.8 macro. Well, that first optic will be coming sooner than you may have thought -- it's expected to hit stores this summer with an estimated price tag of $900. The lens offers a 150mm 35mm-equivalent focal length when paired with a Micro Four Thirds camera, and consists of 10 elements in nine groups, including three ED elements that assist with correcting aberrations. Everything else you need to know can be found in the PR after the break.
Continue reading Olympus adds 75mm f/1.8 portrait lens to Micro Four Thirds lineup
Olympus adds 75mm f/1.8 portrait lens to Micro Four Thirds lineup originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 24 May 2012 01:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | | E! mail thi s | CommentsSource: http://www.engadget.com/2012/05/24/google-teach-first-raspberry-pi/
Eric Schmidt has said that Google will make cash available through its investment into Teach First to buy Raspberry Pi and Arduino units for British schoolchildren. He was at the UK's Science Museum to talk about Mountain View's partnership with the charity, which puts top university graduates into schools to teach disadvantaged kids. The Android-maker wrote a cheque to fund over 100 places on the scheme, aiming to get bright computer scientists to reintroduce engineering principles to pupils. Mr. Schmidt hoped that with the right support, kits like the Raspberry Pi would do for this generation what the BBC Micro did three decades ago.
Google pumps cash into UK classrooms, will buy Arduino, Raspberry Pi sets for kids originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 24 May 2012 05:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/05/23/lg-55-inch-oled-tv-gets-official-design-possible-9-000-price/
LG has been coy quiet about details of its 55-inch OLED TV since we saw its hyper-rich organic colors at CES, but it just nailed down a number of details at a Monte Carlo Monaco event. The 55EM9600 has seen its display base get visibly bigger now that the screen isn't being specially perched at a trade show, but the redesign and using a carbon fiber back has let it shed an extra millimeter of thickness, down to 4mm (0.16 inches). The steadier footing puts all the AV connectors at the back, while a trio of USB ports sit on the side for those who often share media from their cameras and flash drives. LG wouldn't give our Spanish team definite release info about the OLED set, but there's been repeated murmurs of a European price of about €9,000 ($11,313) and a possible release as soon as July, just inside LG's official target of the second half of the year. Certainly not the most frugal TV you can buy at this size if that's true, then, but it'll certainly get everyone's attention -- now where's our US details?
Update: There's now a swishy promo video below, plus some English language details at the source link.
Update 2: For those who'd like a bit more reading material, we've added the full PR after the break.
Update 3: LG has also helped settle some of the details that it can share at this early stage: July isn't looking likely, but the price could be on the sunnier side, tentatively edging closer to €8,000 ($10,063).
LG's 55-inch OLED TV gets official design, possible €9,000 price tag (update 3: LG fills in more) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 23 May 2012 16:12:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink< a href="http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=es&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http%:%/%/es.engadget.com%/2012%/05%/23%/lg-55em960v-hdtv-oled%2F" target="_blank">Engadget Spanish (translated) | LG UK Blog | Email this | Comments
Note: This post has been edited from its original version, after we learned that the data we initially used was flawed. We have our original post below the chart, as well as an explanation.
Time spent on Facebook on desktop computers in the U.S. has been totally flat for the year, according to data from comScore. For a while now Facebook's engagement had been on the rise, but it appears to have hit a wall.
Part of the reason is that Facebook's users are going mobile, and spending their time there. This is bad for Facebook because it makes almost no money on mobile.
Note: This chart is flawed, comScore told us after we published. ComScore's previous data was unintentionally inflated due to existence of non-user requested URLs. However, ComScore has analyzed data since the beginning of the year using the same filters, and it tells us that the trend for Facebook is flat this year.
Follow the Chart Of The Day on Twitter: @chartoftheday
Original post: Time spent on Facebook on desktop computers in the U.S. has peaked and now it's falling according to data from comScore, via BI Intelligence.
BI Intelligence analyst Alex Cocotas attributes the drop to a "shift to mobile" as well as the rise of rival social networks like Tumblr, and Pinterest.
The shift to mobile is better than losing out to rivals, but it's bad for Facebook's business, because it makes significantly less money from mobile users than desktop users.
As for those rivals, take a look at Pinterest, which seems to have its own engagement problems. Our guess on what's happening there: The company got a lot of buzz, had a crush of new users, which inflated its numbers, and many of those people left.
Please follow SAI on Twitter and Facebook.
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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/05/23/att--samsung-galaxy-appeal-gophone/
What's in a name? For the Samsung Galaxy Appeal, everything. The moniker of AT&T's new Android GoPhone fits the manufacturer's current legal situation perfectly, though admittedly its side-slider QWERTY-packing form factor is the least likely of Sammy's lineup to catch the attention of Cupertino's team of suits. Joking aside, the 4.3-ounce Appeal offers Android 2.3, a 3.2-inch HVGA (that's 480 x 320) display, 800MHz Qualcomm MSM7225A processor, 3MP rear camera and 512MB of RAM. It's also made with 80 percent recycled material and has a microSD port and 1,300mAh battery. The Appeal will begin its wireless sojourn on June 5th at Walmart for $150, and will pop up at other AT&T outlets beginning July 15th. Head below to find the legal team-approved press release.
AT&T launches Samsung Galaxy Appeal GoPhone, available at Walmart on June 5th for $150 originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 23 May 2012 12:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | | Email this | CommentsSource: http://gizmodo.com/5912403/backpack-flash-turns-you-into-a-one+person-photography-studio
The getup starts with a sturdy LowePro backpack designed for bird watchers carrying a large tripod into the wilderness. But since Ian needed to be able to shoot handheld with lots of freedom of movement, he instead filled the pack with a rechargeable battery powering a Canon flash unit, the necessary framing and mounts to position the diffuser dome about five inches above his head, and of course wireless receivers so the flash could be triggered without annoying cables tethered to his camera.
Despite looking just a bit nerdy, the rig worked perfectly for Ian's shoot, even allowing him to adjust and position the flash exactly where he needed it just by twisting his body. With all that weight on his back there's the chance the rig could shorten how long he's able to work on a shoot, but the money he saved working without an assistant might just make it worth it. [Ian Spanier Photography via PetaPixel]
Source: http://gizmodo.com/5912611/facebook-engineer-turns-5+year+olds-into-hackers
By day, Bueno is a Facebook engineer. He helps hone software on the servers underpinning the world's largest social network. But he moonlights as a children's author. His first book is called Lauren Ipsum, and it's a fairy tale that seeks to introduce children - as young as five or as old as 12 - to the concepts of computer science.
But this isn't done with code. It's done with metaphors. In one scene, the titular character, Laurie Ipsum, teaches a mechanical turtle to draw a perfect circle using simple instructions in the form of a poem. "I wanted to write a book not on how to program, but how to think like a programmer," Bueno tells Wired.
The book was illustrated by his wife, Ytaelena Lopez, and the two self-published after raising funds on Kickstarter. Bueno - who "tested" the book on his nephews as he wrote it - says that programming should be a part of everyone's education. "The first step to controlling your life in the modern world is understanding computers," he says.
Lauren Ipsum is part of a much larger movement that seeks to bring programming skills to, well, everyone. At MIT, researchers have built a programming platform called Scratch that targets children as young as eight years old, and this gave rise to a Google-funded platform called App Inventor that applies many of the same tools to the development of Android applications.
Meanwhile, a startup called Codecademy is now offering programming lessons over the web in an effort to turn the everyman into a programmer, and in January, when it announced a crash course called "Code Year," over 445,985 people pledged to learn to code in 2012, including New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
Not everyone is keen on the idea. Just last week, Jeff Atwood, the CTO and co-founder of the question-and-answer site StackExchange, lambasted the code literacy movement with a blog post entitled "Please Don't Learn Code."
"If the mayor of New York City actually needs to sling JavaScript code to do his job, something is deeply, horribly, terribly wrong with politics in the state of New York," he wrote. "I love programming. I also believe programming is important … in the right context, for some people. But so are a lot of skills. I would no more urge everyone to learn programming than I would urge everyone to learn plumbing."
But Carlos Bueno believes this sells programming well short. "Programming is a broadly applicable life skill," he says. "Even if you're not in front of a computer, you can use programming skills for problem solving." Lauren Ipsum doesn't include any computer code, but it does seek to instill the ideas behind computer programming.
Mark Surman, the Executive Director of the Mozilla Foundation, says that although some children may not be suited to computer science, we should at least expose them to it. "If we want kids to be makers rather than consumers (our goal), this is a critical age," he says.
For Bueno, the movement also makes sense because computer technology is replacing so many traditional jobs. Travel agents are seeing their jobs replaced by web-based travel booking sites. E-discovery software is disrupting the legal profession. If you're a programmer, you give yourself a future.
Bueno learned this first hand. His family owned an electronics repair business when he was a kid, and he and his siblings grew up repairing VCRs. But the business shut down in the mid-90s because the technology became so cheap that it was easier just to throw away a broken VCR and replace it than was to repair it.
After the family business closed, Bueno started working in illustration and calligraphy. But he soon realized that desktop publishing was replacing much of the work he was doing by hand. So he became a graphic designer. (The name Lauren Ipsum is a pun on "Lorem Ipsum," the text graphic designers use to fill space on mock-ups). But then the desktop publishing business was undercut by the growth of the web. So Bueno decided he better learn the computing game.
He started by building a simple website. Then he taught himself JavaScript by copying and pasting snippets of code he found elsewhere on the web. After that, he moved on to server side scripts and even built his own meta-search engine, and eventually, he landed a job building an e-commerce site for a company that sold computers by mail.
With Lauren Ipsum, he seeks to show children how they too can learn these same sorts of skills. Ever since landing that first job, Bueno has focusing on "leveling up" - i.e. finding people who know more than he does and learning as much as possible from them. Each job is a new challenge that requires him to learn new skills from others.
Metaphors, he says, are a key part of learning computer science. He tries to talk to as many people as he can about a subject and then he starts to form metaphors that describe it. "Then I can present them with those metaphors, and they can tell me better ones," he says.
Lauren Ipsum is a collection of these metaphors that have been turned into a stories. "Stories are distilled knowledge taught through the ages," Bueno says. "It should be an unremarkable way to teach computer science, but it's a still a new approach."
In order to help spread this approach to education, for every copy of Lauren Ipsum sold, Bueno and Lopez are donating one copy to a school, library, or educational program. So far they've donated 57 copies.
It's too early to say whether the code literacy movement is creating a new generation of professional computer scientists, but according to Ladies Learning Code founder Heather Payne, Lauren Ipsum is already playing a role in helping young girls get involved in programming. Payne says that although many girls are interested in technology, many need more guidance.
"Through the tech camps I run for girls, I've seen how role models, combined with a safe and supportive environment, can make an enormous difference in the way girls view technology," Payne says. "Lauren Ipsum does the same thing. Laurie is a role model, and even a bit of a hero. I hope she becomes the new Nancy Drew."
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/05/22/verizons-zte-jetpack-890l-ships-may-24/
Verizon has just finished trotting out the last of its known 2012 Jetpack hotspots through the arrival of the ZTE-made model we saw back at CES in January. Now carrying a bit more Verizon red on the surface and a bit less Chinese in the name, the Jetpack 890L can share its 4G LTE sugar with as many as 10 WiFi devices at once. There's no removable battery like its Novatel-made Jetpack cousin, but you do get Global Ready (read: HSPA) roaming abroad. We're most liking the price. At $20 on a contract after a $50 mail-in rebate, the 890L will be the most frugal way to board the LTE hotspot train once it reaches stores on May 24th.
Verizon's ZTE-built Jetpack 890L 4G hotspot ships May 24th, promises globetrotting for $20 originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 22 May 2012 16:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/05/22/samsung-chromebox-gets-a-premature-outing-330-price-tag/
Samsung has been almost completely silent regarding its Chromebox since its CES outing, so we were taken aback when we were tipped off that it was hiding in plain sight on TigerDirect's web store. Sure enough, a product listing provides a lot more detail about the tiny Chrome OS desktop than Samsung gave us in January, including its use of a 1.9GHz, dual-core Celeron B840, 4GB of DDR3 memory, a 16GB solid-state drive and six (not five) USB ports. We haven't seen mention of the promised wireless keyboard and mouse bundle, although the retailer's configuration might reflect a stripped-down trim level: at $330, it's a lot less than the $400 we were quoted at the start of the year. We wouldn't count on the store listing staying up -- at least, not until Google I/O -- but you can get a whirlwind tour of the Chromebox's core features through the hilariously awkward video below, which strips out the price if you're not watching from TigerDirect itself.
[Thanks, Pete]
Continue reading Samsung Chromebox gets a premature outing, $330 price tag (video)
Samsung Chromebox gets a premature outing, $330 price tag (video) originally appeared on Engadget o! n Tue, 2 2 May 2012 16:32:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/05/22/npd-q1-2012/
NPD DisplaySearch is declaring Apple to be the undisputed champion of the mobile PC business for the first quarter of the year. The fruity phone flinger shipped (shipped, not sold) 17.2 million mobile PCs in the time, a figure that contentiously includes the iPad. Second place was taken by HP, which packed off 8.9 million units -- enough to put it at the top of the Laptop-only chart.
It's a familiar story over on the tablets leader-board, too. Cupertino pushed out 13.6 million iPads to maintain first place, while Samsung took the silver medal after packing off 1.6 million of its numerous Galaxy slates. Surprisingly, Amazon only needed to ship 900,000 Kindle Fires to take third, although given that the bookseller never discloses its numbers, we have to take that last number with a dash of disbelief.
Continue reading NPD Q1 2012: Apple still king of the mobile computing hill thanks to iPad
NPD Q1 2012: Apple still king of the mobile computing hill thanks to iPad originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 22 May 2012 17:37:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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