Author: Terren

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Windows Phone 7 updates Bing to find music and barcodes, provide turn-by-turn directions and send speech-to-text SMS?

Developers are getting plenty of toys alongside Windows Phone 7’s “Mango” release, but there may be extra baubles for regular users, too — Microsoft will reportedly add a few features to Bing in the near future which could prove particularly useful. According to the latest episode of the Windows Phone Dev Podcast — which hosted Microsoft’s Brandon Watson as a guest — a new function called Bing Audio will act like a Shazam for recognizing music (and will sell you Zune tracks) while Bing Vision will use your smartphone’s camera to read barcodes and do optical character recognition, plus potentially provide support for augmented reality apps. There’s also allegedly turn-by-turn voice directions for Bing Maps and a native podcast player, and one more potentially exciting thing — voice-to-text for sending SMS messages without lifting a finger. Hear all about the rumor at our source link, at just about the 40-minute mark.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Windows Phone 7 updates Bing to find music and barcodes, provide turn-by-turn directions and send speech-to-text SMS? originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 08 May 2011 22:56:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink WMPowerUser  |  sourceWindows Phone Dev Podcast  | Email this | Comments

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Comscore report finds widening Android lead in US smartphone market, largely at RIM’s expense

The percentage shift in the chart above tells most of the story here. According to Comscore’s latest report, Android’s share of the US smartphone market grew an impressive six percent in the three-month period ending in March to land at 34.7 percent, and RIM took the biggest hit as a result, slipping 4.5 points to a share of 27.1 percent. That’s still enough to keep it ahead of Apple, however, which held its own with a slight gain to 25.5 percent. Both Microsoft and Palm / HP slipped just under a percent each to land in a distant fourth and fifth place, respectively. As for mobile OEMs, things stayed almost identical during the three month period, with Samsung, LG, and Motorola occupying the top three spots, and only Apple seeing any significant gains thanks to the Verizon iPhone launch — although that still wasn’t enough to push it above RIM for the fourth spot. Hit up the source link below for all the numbers.

Comscore report finds widening Android lead in US smartphone market, largely at RIM’s expense originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 08 May 2011 18:14:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink AFP  |  sourceComscore  | Email this | Comments

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DoubleTwist upgrade features AirPlay support for more Apple / Android miscegenation

Add another notch to DoubleTwist’s Apple ecosystem integration belt, now that its Android app has added AirPlay streaming to the list of features. As of version 1.4 it will stream music, videos or pictures to the Apple TV or other compatible devices while also claiming beta support for Sonos hardware. The DoubleTwist player is free, but using AirPlay means purchasing the $4.99 AirSync add-on that also enables wireless sync with your media library (iTunes) and streaming to DLNA or uPnP compatible devices. Twonky Mobile is a free alternative that’s also AirPlay-compatible but without the tight iTunes integration; you can check them both out in the market.

DoubleTwist upgrade features AirPlay support for more Apple / Android miscegenation originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 08 May 2011 12:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  sourceDoubleTwist, Twonky Mobile  | Email this | Comments

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Five Best Apps to Send Group Text Messages on the Cheap [Hive Five]

When you need to get the same message out to a lot of people immediately, you could send them an email, but that’s hardly real-time communication. At these times, group texting apps are excellent tools for the job. Here’s a look at five of the most popular group messaging apps or services that communicate with several people instantly. More »







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Space Adventures will shoot you (and your ego) to the moon for $150 million

Y'know, there are only so many pristine beaches and spectacular slopes one can see before terrestrial tourism becomes blasé. That's why Space Adventures — who lets folks vacay in space via suborbital jaunts — is offering to shoot you to the moon during your next work sabbatical. Amateur astronauts won’t actually land on the lunar surface, of course, but their Soyuz spacecraft will get within 62 miles of it. To indulge in your lunar fantasy, it’ll only cost you 150 million bucks, or roughly the GDP of a [insert small island nation here]. One of the two seats is already taken, but the company needs another would-be moon man or lunar lady before the trip’s a go. The only thing stopping us (and everyone we know) from signing up is an empty bank account — does Fastweb do spaceflight scholarships?

Space Adventures will shoot you (and your ego) to the moon for $150 million originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 08 May 2011 08:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Space.com  |  sourceSpace Adventures  | Email this | Comments

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Amazon Cloud Player streams tunes to iOS, following silent upgrade (updated)

Amazon Cloud Player has been laying low following its scuffle with Sony Music, but that hasn’t kept the company’s developers from rolling a crucial new feature out — support for Apple’s iOS devices, which it didn’t have on day one. Despite running in the Safari browser window, we’ve confirmed that songs will indeed play. If you’ve got a device handy, give it a try yourself; otherwise, we’ll update with impressions a little later this evening.

Update: Great news — we ran the Cloud Player on an original iPad and iPhone 3GS without a hitch. In fact, there was very little (if any) lag or time delay when buffering a new song, and were able to refresh playlists and other information quickly. The interface of the Cloud Player is almost the same as — if not identical to — the page that loads up on your computer browser.

Even better, the Cloud Player works flawlessly with the multitasking controls in iOS; the usual forward/pause/volume options are all usable as you play Angry Birds. Sadly, there is just one bump in the road that keeps the process from being perfectly smooth: mobile Safari prohibits you from doing drag-and-drops, which adds a couple extra steps to the process of adding songs to your playlists. Take a look below for some screenshots of the Cloud Player in action.

Sean Hollister contributed to this post.

Amazon Cloud Player streams tunes to iOS, following silent upgrade (updated) originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 07 May 2011 22:27:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  sourceiFans  | Email this | Comments

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Rogers to officially become a “4G HPSA+” network on May 9th

Well, it happened. Effective May 9th Rogers will be shifting gears on their 3G (HSPA+) and calling it a “4G HSPA+” network. In the internal doc Rogers says this “is simply a network name change” to align with the International Telecommunicaitons Union standards and also to “bring up on par with Bell and TELUS and […]

Related posts:

  1. Rogers officially goes live with 21 Mbps HSPA+ network
  2. Bell Officially launching HSPA network on November 4th
  3. TELUS officially launches 3G+ network in Saskatchewan
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Microsoft patent details a 3D desktop interface with a room for your windows

Many have tried and failed to bring a 3D desktop interface to an otherwise 2D operating system, but that certainly hasn’t stopped others from trying. The latest example to crop up comes courtesy of none other than Microsoft, which recently received a patent for what it describes as a “method and apparatus for providing a three-dimensional task gallery computer interface.” In other words, it’s an interface intended to help you better manage multiple tasks, which the patent suggests could be done in a 3D environment with a floor, walls and a ceiling. Apparently, you’d be able to group multiple windows at various spots in the “room,” which would let you rely on your spatial memory to easily find a given task — with the room getting deeper and deeper to accommodate more tasks. In the patent’s claims, the only means described for navigating around that room is a set of icons that would adjust to suit the 3D environment, although it certainly seems like it could easily be adapted to accommodate gesture controls as well. Hit up the source link below for plenty more line drawings where this one came from.

Microsoft patent details a 3D desktop interface with a room for your windows originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 07 May 2011 12:51:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Technology Review  |  sourceGoogle Patents  | Email this | Comments

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Why Wait For Google Talk Video Chat? Flash The New Gtalk App NOW [Video]

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I’m sure you’ve no doubt heard that Google was nice enough to finally release an update to Gingerbread that gives Nexus S users the ability to video-chat using the native Google Talk app. Pretty sweet of them. Even if only 4 percent of people in the world are actually running Android 2.3 Gingerbread on their phone’s and even less actually own the Nexus S.

So what about the rest of us? Well, you could either be a sad panda and wait around for – oh say, 4 more months for your carrier to push out the Android 2.3.4 OTA. Or you can take matters into your own hands and flash a handy zip file that installs the all new and improved GTalk app with video chat onto your phone.

There is a catch however. One, you need to be rooted. Two, you need to already be running a Gingerbread ROM (doesn’t matter which version). If you’re one of those lucky people then watch this video to see exactly what this Google video chatting business is all about. Or, if you hate looking at my face (like I do), you can always just follow the steps below:

  • Backup your ROM
  • Download zip file
  • Place zip file onto the root of your sd card (not inside any folders)
  • Use ROM Manager to flash the zip or boot into recovery manually and flash the zip
  • Enjoy =)

[Via XDA]

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“Bugged” Xbox 360 game led to teenage killer’s arrest

On September 1, 2009, a 19-year-old woman from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada was the victim of a random shooting. Charlotte Dawn Jolly was shot and killed on the streets of Saskatoon while she was out celebrating her birthday with friends. The suspect was 16 years old at the time, and cannot…