Back in December, Motorola let the world know it was planning to take on the iPad at CES the following month. The company released a quick and goofy CGI ad that took more than a few potshots at Apple’s wildly popular tablet. A few weeks later, the company debuted the Xoom, the first tablet to showcase the long awaited Android 3.0, Honeycomb, garnering rave reviews from around the industry.
Motorola is offering up another computer-generated video, again devoid of the actual device, strangely. The video will air during the Superbowl, but the company is showcasing it online now (check it out, after the jump).
The company references Apple’s own iconic Superbowl ad [above], opening with the text, “2011 looks a lot like 1984. One authority, one design, one
way to work.” The ad largely revolves around an image of the earth wearing those familiar white Apple earbuds.
“It’s time for more choices,” the ad implores, offering a laundry list of Xoom features, including a dual-core processor, 1080p video playback, front and rear facing cameras, 4G upgrades, and Honeycomb itself.
Is the Xoom ad destined to be as iconic as Apple’s “1984” ad? Not even close. But it does get its point across.
SaskTel has announced that a total of 36 new locations have been added to their 3G+ network (the full list is after the break). Bill Boyd, Minister Responsible for SaskTel said “When the network is complete in 2011 it will be available to 98% of the population”. However taking a quick look at their 3G+ […]
It’s hard to fathom now, but there was a time when Google’s open mobile operating system seemed destined to fail. Android was really slow out of the gate. Few users and fewer handset manufacturers were adopting it, and after several months, the OS seemed dead in the water.
Now look at where we are. Mobile analyst group Canalys is reporting today that, in the fourth quarter of last year, Android became the top smartphone platform. Shipments for the OS hit 32.9 million in the quarter, beating out 31.0 million worldwide shipments for the Symbian platform.
Apple and RIM were in a distant third and fourth, respectively, at 16.2 and 14.6 million shipments repectively. Microsoft, meanwhile, rounded out the top five at 3.1 million handsets shipped globally.
Despite Symbian’s slipping marketshare, Nokia is still the top smartphone vendor, with 28 percent of the total market.
A problem requiring a “silicon fix” is bad news in the chipset business, and sadly that’s what Intel is announcing. Its new Intel 6 Series chipset, Cougar Point, has been found to have a flaw, something to do with the SATA controller. Intel is indicating that the ports can “degrade over time,” leading to poor i/o performance down the road. All shipments have been stopped and a fix has been implemented for new deliveries, but it sounds like recalls will be starting soon for those with this ticking time bomb silicon within. It isn’t a critical problem right now, though, so if you own a Sandy Bridge Core i5 or Core i7 system keep computing with confidence while looking for a recall notice, but it is bad news for Intel’s bottom line: the company is advising a $300 million hit to revenue.
Update: Jimmy sent us a chat log with an Intel customer service representative indicating that this recall only affects “some desktop boards based on Intel P67 chipset,” that the H67 chipset boards appear to not be affected, but that the company doesn’t have a comprehensive list yet. We’ve certainly seen cases where CSRs don’t have all the info in this sort of situation, but still we’d advise waiting a bit before tearing your new mobo out and bringing it back to the store.
Whether you’ve lost the key to your own suitcase and need to get it open in a hurry or you’re trying to plant some contraband in your dodgy roommate’s bag, this clever hack has to be seen to be believed. More »
It’s been an interesting few weeks of rumored Dell Streak 7 prices, but as promised, T-Mobile’s setting the record straight with some official dollar figures. Yep, that predicted $330 price was indeed pretty far off — turns out, T-Mobile will be offering the 7-inch, Android 2.2 tablet for just $200 (okay, $199.99 to be exact) on contract starting this Wednesday, February 2nd. Of course, you’ll have to sign a two-year contract to get that sweet deal as well as send in a $50 mail-in rebate. Those looking for a bit more freedom can snatch up the NVIDIA Tegra 2-powered, T-Mobile HSPA+ slate for 450 bucks, which actually seems like a pretty sweet deal to us considering the Samsung Galaxy Tab is still about $500 off contract and $300 with two years of service. Sure, the Galaxy Tab has a few more things going for it, including a higher resolution display and bigger battery, but you’ll just have to wait for our full review of the Streak 7 to find out if Dell’s got a killer “4G” Android tablet hitting shelves later this week.
You might think of a laser as light forced into a single, directed beam, but scientists have recently discovered that if you fire a laser in one direction, the air itself can fire another right back. Using a 226nm UV laser, researchers at Princeton University managed to excite oxygen atoms to the point that they emit infrared light along the same channel as the original beam, except this time pointed back where it came from. Since the return beam’s chemistry depends on the particles in the air to generate the return beam, the “backward laser” could potentially carry the signature of those particles back to the source and help identify them there. That seems to be the entire goal, in fact — the project, funded by an Office of Naval Research program on “Sciences Addressing Asymmetric Explosive Threats,” hopes that such a laser can ID bombs from a distance by hunting for trace chemicals in the air. Sounds like the perfect addition to our terahertz specs, and one step closer to the tricorder of our dreams.
Google calendar has great flexibility with reminders, but the defaults are often useless without tweaking the settings. Here are some common notification settings you may want to change to suit your needs better
One of the best things about Indian films is the way they manage to be hilarious, campy, epic, and awe-inspiring all at the same time. Enthiran, which apparently translates to "Robot," is a three-hour master work featuring a number of Indian movie stars about a robot who falls in love with a girl but finds himself reprogrammed to kill everything in sight. How can you not possibly want to watch that?
Also making waves on YouTube this week is a slow-motion video of a Shaolin monk throwing a needle – an ordinary needle – through a pane of glass. If you ever wondered whether there was something to all of the movies and lore, watch this and know that yes, in fact, there is. But those two videos just scratch the surface. Hit the jump to see all five.
Robot (TeztigoMix_Part 02)
You don’t have to know what’s being said here to appreciate how incredibly awesome it is. This 10 minute stretch of film picks up right after the robot, Chitti, has been reprogrammed and goes on a destructive rampage, complete with exploding vehicles, machine guns, and, of course, musical numbers. Want to see the first part? It’s right here.
Shaolin Monk Throwing Needle through a Piece of Glass 2
When I first heard about this video, I didn’t think it could possibly be true, but sure enough, the proof is in the video. A Shaolin monk, with an ordinary sewing needle in his right hand, manages to throw the needle such that it pieces a pane of glass perfectly. It doesn’t shatter or break the glass into pieces; it simply pierces it and passes through in one piece, leaving a pretty big hole behind it. The video is shot at 1000 frames per second and played back in slow-motion…as if that will help you figure out how he managed to do it.
Lazy Teenage Superheroes – Short Film
If you've ever wondered what a bunch of super-powered young adults would do with their time, this is probably a much more accurate representation of how they would behave than any new animated television series could possibly describe. The special effects are pretty good, too.
The story goes like this: a bunch of super-powered teenagers are hanging out in their dorm/apartment that looks remarkably like a set of abandoned warehouses when they’re confronted by some of their old nemeses. The story is told by one of their friends who doesn’t have superpowers at all, but that doesn’t stop him from making himself useful.
Old Spice | I’m Back
The Old Spice Guy has made his triumphant return to YouTube. In a new video, the Old Spice Guy, also known as Isaiah Mustafa, announces he’ll be seen again soon with a whole new line of Old Spice ads in a brand new campaign. The spot is just over a minute long, but it has all of the flare and humor of the original ads. Welcome back, Old Spice Guy. The Internet missed you.
I Wanna Be An Engineer – (Billionaire Geeked Out Mix) Only Won the Lyrical Engineer
We mentioned this one a little earlier in the week, but it bears repeating, partially because of Only Won’s sweet rhymes, and partially because he gives PC Mag a good solid shout out. It doesn’t hurt that since he uploaded the video, Only Won’s racked up close to 300,000 views of his music video. Seriously, someone get that guy a job as a Systems Engineer. I know a couple of companies that are hiring.
Previously we’ve highlighted a guide to screws, this guide to bolts and fasteners will round out your DIY knowledge. Know the difference between a sex bolt, a mating screw, and a shoulder bolt? No? Read on to find out. More »
In this 1994 clip from The Today Show, Bryant Gumbel and Katie Couric are completely befuddled by the notion of the internet. We laugh now, but remember that we’ll be the ones immortalized as rubes when psychic data clouds debut. More »
Had enough Honeycomb this week? Perhaps — but next week is a whole new week, and Google’s got your back. Mountain View has selected Wednesday, February 2nd for an event that’ll include “an in-depth look at Honeycomb, Android ecosystem news and hands-on demos,” so by all accounts this seems to be more than a mere wrap-up of everything they’ve announced in the past few weeks. New tablets? Honeycomb for smartphones? Android 2.4? Something else entirely? We’ll be there to find out, of course.
Yep, these cereal boxes light up. They’re using a new branded-technology called eCoupling that provides electricity via induction, which means the shelves have a coil with AC power running through it. The “printed coils” on the boxes allow inventory control and data exchange presumably thanks to a low-power microcontroller. But in the video after the break you can see that the printed lighting on the boxes lets them flash parts of the box art as a way to attract customers’ attention. We’d bet that they’re using electroluminescent materials but we weren’t able to get find specifics on how this is done. We just hope advertisers don’t start rolling noise-makers into their packaging.
Thought Honeycomb was just for tablets? Well, it’s not! Sure, tablets might be Google’s main thrust with the release, but we’ve been able to dig up enough evidence in the preview SDK’s emulator released yesterday to suggest that these guys are still keeping their eyes on the smartphone prize.
Here’s how it works: the emulator can be set to load at an arbitrary screen resolution. By default, that’s WXGA, 1280 x 768 — perfect for tablets, but obviously a wee bit large for even the biggest smartphones. Well, it turns out that setting the emulator to WVGA (like you might find on a modern mid- to high-end smartphone) triggers a moderately different shell UI that lacks most of the whiz-bang home screen stuff Google’s shown on the Honeycomb tablets. In fact, the default launcher crashes out entirely, which means you need to install a replacement (Launcher Pro works nicely) just to play around.
Once you get in, it’s pretty raw, but you immediately notice that the emulator’s got some traces of smartphone support. Notably, the status bar reverts to a more smartphone-friendly form, albeit one with pre-Gingerbread background coloration and incorrectly-inverted font colors. The lock screen (pictured above) is back to its old form, not the webOS-esque circular lock in the Honeycomb tablet UI. The browser — which has been completely revamped in Honeycomb — works, though without visible tabs; Google might be thinking that they’d take up too much real estate on a screen this small.
Again, you can’t glean much here, but it’s interesting primarily because the emulator knows to revert to a smartphone UI layout at the lower resolution — a possible sign that Honeycomb will be a true dual-mode, dual-purpose platform from day one. And even if it isn’t, it looks like they’re setting themselves up for a two-UI strategy down the road.
