Reality Bites
Time-traveling dinosaur drama Terra Nova just can’t seem to get off the ground. It’s already been delayed twice, supposedly due to laborious special effects work. But digitizing dinosaurs isn’t the real reason this series is stuck in production purgatory. More »
There are endless flavors of “Linux on a stick,” tasty downloadable versions of that OS which run from removable storage and let you take Linus’ progeny for a spin without dedicating any of your partitions to the cause. There have been ways of making this work with Windows, too, but now Microsoft is getting into the game properly. That leaked version of Windows 8 we looked at recently contains a feature called Portable Workspaces, which enables you to take a 16GB (or greater) external storage device and dump a bootable, runnable copy of Win 8 on there. It remains to be seen just how many copies one could create, and whether they ever expire or, indeed, whether they can themselves be copied onto an HDD like a ghost image, but it’s easy to see this as a boon for support personnel. Well, support personnel of the future, anyway.
[Thanks, Peter]
Windows 8 to feature USB-runnable Portable Workspaces, sales of 16GB thumb drives set to soar originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 15 Apr 2011 07:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Lately, anything goes when a RIM CEO gets in front of the media. Fortunately, it was the other CEO, Jim Balsillie, talking to Bloomberg this time delivering a calm, cool rebuttal to all the lukewarm PlayBook reviews. His consumer defense is largely based upon the PlayBook’s ability to receive software updates (we received three in the brief time we had our review unit) throughout its lifetime. Jim, as you can imagine, preferred keeping the conversation focused on how the PlayBook is fully functional today when used in combination with a BlackBerry handset in business environments. Balsillie did seem to hint that the consumer experience could improve relatively quickly, saying, “We’ll have an over the air email client to announce very very soon. We have BlackBerry World — our user conference — in a couple weeks. Stay tuned for all capabilities we have coming out on this stuff.” See the man dance on the hotseat right after the break.
Continue reading RIM: PlayBook email client ‘very very soon,’ 3G model this summer
RIM: PlayBook email client ‘very very soon,’ 3G model this summer originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 15 Apr 2011 01:45:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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So Flip Video’s last offering wasn’t terribly amazing, but we had faith that the USB pocket camcorder would get back to its simplistic roots — you know, until Cisco axed the whole division, along with 550 souls. Well, the truth is that the company was indeed working on something rather cool, and though we’d only heard whispers until now, the New York Times‘ David Pogue says the day after Cisco brought down the guillotine is when the FlipLive was due to hit shelves. It would have been a livestreaming camera, connected with WiFi to the cloud, allowing users to share johnny-on-the-spot videos with the entire world in real time. Instead, the camera and its little red button are off to that great big server in the sky.
Cisco’s axing of Flip had an additional casualty: the unannounced FlipLive streaming camera originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 14 Apr 2011 23:28:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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In technology that is lifted straight from Robocop, Brazilian cops will be outfitted with glasses that can scan faces in a crowd and automatically pick out criminals. The glasses use advanced facial recognition technology that can scan 400 faces a second at 50 yards away. More »
You already know the strange powers of Stephin Merritt, but today we’re talking about real magnetic fields. Powerful electromagnets, it turns out, can do remarkable things to the brain — in this case, prevent a volunteer from reciting “Humpty Dumpty.” The carefully directed magnets temporarily disrupt the brain’s speech centers; the volunteer can still sing the rhyme using different areas of the brain, but simply can’t overcome a series of stammers when trying to merely recite it. Of course, it’s not all mad scientist applications: the UK team experimenting with transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) thinks it can help us understand and treat migraines (as we’ve seen before with the Migraine Zapper), depression, and ADHD, among other ailments. But improving physical well-being doesn’t make for nearly as entertaining media — see the British inflict some involuntary quiet time in the video above.
Magnetic fields shut down speech, permit love songs (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 14 Apr 2011 17:56:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
A little less than 30 minutes before purposefully driving her minivan off a pier with her four children inside, Lashanda Armstrong updated her Facebook status from her Blackberry: “I’m sorry everyone forgive me please for what I’m gonna do… This is it!!!” More »
Can a porn “parody” of a science fiction classic have reasonably good acting, nice special effects, and a plot that you could give a crap about? That’s the real final frontier. More »
IDC Research is expecting 1.5 million tablets will be sold in Canada by the end of 2011. There is no insight into the sales from each manufacturer but everyone will be dropping at least one new tablet this year: Apple with the iPad 2, Samsung with the Galaxy Tab 8.9 & 10.1, Motorola with the […]
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Upending a theory of physics maintained for over a century, researchers at the University of Michigan have discovered that magnetic fields coming from light waves are 100 million times stronger than previously believed, creating new possibilities for harvesting solar power. More »
It was not long ago that an early build of Windows 8 leaked to the Internet. While that build was a bit dated, there now appears to be users who have build 7955 in their hands. While the build has not fully leaked, it is clear that users outside of…
After taking a breather from cranking out new tablets, Archos is at it again, this time with the Archos 7c Home Tablet, a 7-inch number that ARMdevices.net caught on camera during a visit to the company’s Chinese outpost. This slate packs a Cortex A8 processor and RK2918 chipset, which the rep quaintly says is “faster than any chipset you can find” — you know, owing to its 1.2GHz clock speed and all. Alas, it runs Android Gingerbread (2.3) and not Honeycomb (3.0), so you’ll have to do some hacking to get your Android Market fix. Although the 7c has a capacitive display, the woman leading the demo appears to jab at browser links with her finger — a throwback to some less-than-responsive resistive screens we’ve tested. On the bright side, 1080p video plays smoothly — at least in the few seconds before the camera pans away. The 7c is headed to the US and Europe in June for an unknown price, but for now you can head past the break to see it in action.
Continue reading Archos flashes 7c Android tablet, brags about its 1.2GHz clock speed
Archos flashes 7c Android tablet, brags about its 1.2GHz clock speed originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 14 Apr 2011 12:26:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Posted by Jiří Semecký, Software Engineer
Themes in Gmail are great — there are tons to choose from and they give your inbox a personalized look. But we’ve heard from many of you who thought it would be even better if you could give Gmail an even more personalized look and create themes completely on your own.
For a while, you’ve been able to set your own colors, and starting today you can customize your inbox with your own background image too.
Just go to the Themes tab in Settings and choose “Create your own theme.” There, you can select background images for the main area and the footer.
The next time you hit the Netflix app on your Xbox 360 the update we heard about at CES will be waiting, bringing Kinect owners the ability to flick through their videos (like ESPN3 and Zune have since the peripheral launched) without digging a controller out of the couch cushions. After the 43Mb update downloads waving ones hand for the camera or saying Xbox will pull up the new menu seen above, which auto sorts selections for browsing by voice or gesture based on what it thinks you may want to watch next. Selecting “browse all” brings you right back to the standard menu and is probably the method most will want to stick with, however being able to pause the movie quickly during playback by simply saying Xbox, Pause (or FF, rewind, skip scene, etc.) is quite convenient. Not near your Xbox? Check out a brief video of it in action after the break.
[Thanks, George]
Continue reading Netflix for Xbox 360 updated with Kinect support, everybody wave!
Netflix for Xbox 360 updated with Kinect support, everybody wave! originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 14 Apr 2011 11:43:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
We’ve seen a rather creepy array of robots programmed to mimic human emotions, but teaching a machine to feel regret? Now, that’s a new one. With funding from Google, a team of Tel Aviv University researchers is working on an algorithm to teach computers to learn from their experiences, thus reducing instances of “virtual regret.” According to the team’s lead, such an algorithm would allow servers and routing systems to more efficiently deal with internet traffic, by recognizing and documenting things like sudden spikes in traffic or increased attention to an online product. Basically, the more they learn from their past inadequacies, the more effectual the machines become. Google’s apparently interested in the potential impact on programs like AdSense and AdWords. Now, if they could just teach online advertisers a sense of shame… Full PR after the break.
Google funds project to teach computers regret, sadly won’t lead to apologetic machines originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 14 Apr 2011 02:17:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
The words “play” and “book” are a bit of an odd choice for RIM’s latest attempt at consumer relevance, a tablet that, at its core, runs one of the most hardcore and industry-friendly operating systems known to man. The OS is QNX and the hardware is, of course, the BlackBerry PlayBook. It’s an enterprise-friendly offering that’s also out to conquer the consumer tablet ecosphere, hoping to follow in the footsteps of the BlackBerry handsets that have filled the pockets of corporate executives and BBM addicts around the globe.
It’s something of a serious tablet when compared to the competition running software from Apple and Google and, while it certainly has games, its biggest strengths are rather more boring. It does a really great job at displaying PowerPoint presentations, for example, and has the security chops to keep last quarter’s dismal sales figures from falling into the wrong hands. Exciting stuff? No, but useful features for sure, and regardless of whether you find those intriguing or boring this is RIM’s seven-inch, Flash-having but 3G-lacking tablet clad in an unassuming but extremely sophisticated exterior. It’s what’s running behind the glass that disappoints.
Gallery: RIM BlackBerry PlayBook
Continue reading BlackBerry PlayBook review
BlackBerry PlayBook review originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 13 Apr 2011 21:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Faeborit Coment: “Story of my life.” – L4a
