Author: Terren

Sony announced that their Android 3.1 Tablet S will be coming to Canada today, we found out the official launch date is actually the 16th of September. There are a couple versions, a 16GB for $499.99 and a 32GB for $599.99. So what makes the Tablet S different than all the other tablets that have arrived on Canadian soil? Here’s a few quick notes with my short time with it.

First, the design is different. Sony says the idea of this tablet came from a folded piece of paper, actually they dub it a “folding design”, with most of the weight being at the top, while the bottom is incredibly thin. It only weighs 590 grams and overall dimensions are 9.5 x 6.8 x 0.3 inches, so a bit smaller than the iPad and the Samsung Galaxy Tab. This is mainly due to the display, coming in at 9.4 inches, which is actually a good size and compliments the unique elevated design when it sits on a table/your lap. The display itself catches a massive amount of fingerprints, but has a high resolution to it at 1280 x 800. The viewing angles were good and in our full review we’ll take it outside and see how it does with direct sunlight.

As for other specs, the Wi-Fi only Tablet S comes with NVIDIA’s dual-core Tegra 2 processor with 1GB of RAM. I saw little lag time during the quick overview but noticed the accelerometer took its sweet time to adjust to the way the tablet was being held. On the front of the tablet is a 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera for video calling, on the back is a respectable 5-megapixel camera that can shoot 720p HD videos. One of the cool aspects of this is the ability to share media via DLNA capable devices. In the video you’ll see a quick demo of how you can immediately push images and videos to the TV, plus share music wirelessly.

The huge advantage that the Tablet S has over the other tablets is the distinctive and standout muliti media features. This is the only tablet that’s PlayStation certified, this comes pre-loaded with a couple titles, Crash Bandicoot and Pinball Heroes. Sony expect more games to be coming out by the end of the year.

As for accessories, to start the Sony Tablet S has two. A Bluetooth Keyboard that has dedicated keys for Android (top left hand side) will retail for $79.99 and a Desk Cradle that will cost $39.99. There’s so much more, like the Reader eBooks and the ability to watch movies from Q Video on demand. We’ll have a full in-depth review up shortly. The Tablet S will be available at the Sony Store (and online), Best Buy, Future Shop and London Drugs.

Related posts:

1. Sony Tablet (Sony S1) launching in Canada, possibly September 14th
2. Sony Tablet S launching in Canada this September, 16GB for $500 and 32GB for $600
3. Leaked video shows 18 glorious seconds of the upcoming Sony S2 Android tablet

RCMP will continue to police Saskatchewan for at least another 20 years — at a cost of about $4 billion.

Today, the top speed limit in the country is 80 mph. By tomorrow, September 1, 2011, the Texas Legislature will have upped the state’s maximum speed limit to 85 miles per hour, faster than any other state in the nation. More »

Today, the top speed limit in the country is 80 mph. By tomorrow, September 1, 2011, the Texas Legislature will have upped the state’s maximum speed limit to 85 miles per hour, faster than any other state in the nation. (Note: A more thorough reading of the bill reveals the Texas DOT was granted the option to raise the speed limit to 85 on the day the bill was signed, back in June. The September 1 milestone eliminated separate night speed limits.) More »

University of Alberta researchers are hoping a tiny sensor placed on the helmets of young hockey players to help determine when they have sustained a concussion.

Read the late.st gaming news, get game downloads, mods, patches, and watch game videos at FileFront

Every now and then I get some totally random emails. This flier came in one. Is this one of the best or worst ideas you’ve seen in a while?

Chrome: Google’s adding offline support to Gmail, Calendar, and Docs. The offline support comes via the Offline Google Mail extension, available now in the Chrome Web Store. More »

Sony Tablet was officially announced today, it’s actually called the Sony Tablet S. This runs off Android OS 3.1 Honeycomb and will come in 2 models, a 16GB for $500 and a 32GB for $600. Sony stated in a press release that the Tablet S “will be available at Sony direct and online stores and authorized dealers across Canada”… this is now up for pre-sale and will hit shelves in September, probably the 14th like we previously stated.

The Tablet S has a 9.4-inch display with a resolution of 1280×800, Nvidia Tegra 2 dual-core processor, Wi-Fi, DLNA (Sony says you’ll be able to use it as a remote control for your TV and “throw” personal content like photos and videos to your TV to view on the big screen”), weighs in at 590 grams. Most importantly, Sony is continuing to bring all their products together, the Tablet S is PlayStation certified, ability to access Reader eBooks, purchase music and watch movies from Q Video on Demand”

We’ll have a hands-on up shortly.

Source: Sony
Via: CNW

Related posts:

1. Sony Tablet (Sony S1) launching in Canada, possibly September 14th
2. HP webOS tablet leaks out… Rogers and Bell launching “Opal” September 2011
3. HP TouchPad priced dropped again at Best Buy, 16GB and 32GB reduced by $50 each

I go off the grid four times a year for a week at a time. During these weeks I put up a vacation reminder that says I’m off the grid, not checking email or phone, but if it’s an emergency I can be found by my assistant Kelly. While I leave her email and phone info in the vacation responder text, she still checks my email to make sure that nothing critical is going on. While this works well, Josh Kopelman blew my mind with his awesome vacation responder a few weeks ago.

I am currently out of the office on vacation.

I know I’m supposed to say that I’ll have limited access to email and won’t be able to respond until I return — but that’s not true. My blackberry will be with me and I can respond if I need to. And I recognize that I’ll probably need to interrupt my vacation from time to time to deal with something urgent.

That said, I promised my wife that I am going to try to disconnect, get away and enjoy our vacation as much as possible. So, I’m going to experiment with something new. I’m going to leave the decision in your hands:

• If your email truly is urgent and you need a response while I’m on vacation, please resend it to interruptyourvacation@firstround.com and I’ll try to respond to it promptly.
• If you think someone else at First Round Capital might be able to help you, feel free to email my assistant, Fiona (fiona@firstround.com) and she’ll try to point you in the right direction.

· Otherwise, I’ll respond when I return…

Warm regards,
Josh

From now on, I’m going to set up an account at interruptyourvacation@foundrygroup.com and leave this in your hands. Powerful – and fucking brilliant.

Over-the-air TV signals switch to digital from analog transmission as of Thursday morning in most major cities across Canada. Here’s how it will affect you.

According to ComScore, out of the 82.2 million people in the US with a smartphone (up ten percent from last quarter), Android came in first as the biggest platform yet again, capturing a whopping 41.8 percent of the market like a boss. In a not-so-close second, Apple was able to snag 27 percent, followed by RIM in the third place spot with 21.7 percent — down 4 percentage points from last quarter. Pulling up the rear is Microsoft with 5.7 percent, and lastly Symbian with a grim 1.9 percent — both down when compared to the previous three months. As far as US hardware manufacturers goes, Samsung is still on top with 25.5 percent of the market, while LG got 20.9 percent and finally Motorola with 14.1 percent, down 1.5 percentage points from before. Apple was able to snag some standing in the OEM space with a 9.5 percent share, while BlackBerry-maker RIM only captured 7.6 percent. As the battle wages on, looks like Androids, iPhones, and BlackBerrys (oh my) are still on top — at least for this quarter. Check out the PR after the break for the full scorecard.

Continue reading ComScore calls Android top dog, Apple pulls further ahead of RIM

ComScore calls Android top dog, Apple pulls further ahead of RIM originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 31 Aug 2011 04:09:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink TG Daily  |  comScore  | Email this | Comments

The Mozilla team has been quietly toiling to bring Firefox to a mid-sized screen near you. It’s already a perpetual favorite on the desktop and has made a bit of a splash on Android phones, now the group has Honeycomb tablets squarely in its crosshairs. It’s still very much in the early stages of development but a few UI decisions have been made, including the choice to adhere pretty strictly to Android 3.0’s minimalist appearance. In landscape mode tabs will be represented as a persistent thumbnail bar on the left, but in portrait they’ll revert to the top with a more familiar appearance. The tabbed Awesome from the mobile version also returns. Check out the gallery below, as well as the source for more detail and more mockups.

Firefox for Honeycomb UI shown off, inching closer to a tablet near you originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 30 Aug 2011 23:38:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Ian Barlow  | Email this | Comments

Chrome has implemented a built-in print dialog that, by default, gives you a preview of your print job in a new tab and handles all of your printing needs without going through your operating system's default print dialog. It's a nice feature when it works, but in practice, the preview crashes—a lot—and when it does, the Print button is disabled. Here's how to work around Chrome's crashy print dialog so you can still get your print on when necessary. More »

Android is becoming popular, Gartner Research estimated their total market share in Q2 2011 hit 43.4%. In Canada, the only stat that we have is from a March 2011 comScore report that found users who adopted Google’s Android OS as their primary smartphone was 12.2%.

Today, Motorola Canada has come out with a stats that shows continued Android adoption. In a press release, heavily promoting the business features of the ATRIX 4G, they stated that “According to third party research commissioned by Motorola Mobility, close to 40 per cent of Canadian company decision makers across all company sizes are considering Android smartphones for business use.”

There was no background on how many decision makers were contacted, where or when the research was conducted. We’ve reached out to Motorola for a bit more insight into what made up the 40%, simply because that’s huge number. I guess “considering” is the key word there, and not transitioned. The comScore report showed Canadians use BlackBerry devices the most, an incredible 42% of smartphone subscribers.

Hopefully we’ll have more stats soon.
Source: CNW

Related posts:

1. Another one bites the dust at Motorola. “Effective immediately”, Stu Reed, formerly the President of Motorola’s Mobile Devices business has decided to leave the company.
2. Samsung accounts for over “34% of all the Android powered smartphones in Canada”
3. Motorola XT720 “Will remain on Android 2.1″

If you use Google’s Public DNS server or OpenDNS as your DNS server, you may notice starting today that YouTube videos load faster and other web content comes in quicker. If you’re using your ISP’s DNS server as the default, now’s a good time to try Google’s or OpenDNS. More »