Author: Terren

There’s a lot of work going on in the background, but Dev Channel subscribers of Google Chrome might not even notice they’ve been upgraded overnight to Chrome 9. Tweaks to the JavaScript engine, the off-by-default hardware acceleration, and some of the extension handling are present, but most of the work listed in the lengthy changelog relates to features not quite ready for primetime. Chrome 9 arrived for Windows, Mac, and Linux users running the Dev channel release. [Google Chrome Releases] More »

Journalist David McCandless indexed over 10,000 Facebook status updates, and found that breakups peak twice a year: once just before spring break (to make you feel less guilty about all that drunken anonymous sex) and just before Christmas (to save cash on gifts). McCandless also found that most breakups happen on a Monday. The worst day of the week just got crappier.

Facebook Status Updates Reveal We’re Entering Breakup Season originally appeared on Switched on Wed, 03 Nov 2010 07:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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German scientists have developed a chip which can be implanted behind the retina to restore sight to blind people.

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Want some specificity about LG’s super-duper tablet roadmap? Last we heard from the Korean tech giant, it was canning plans for a Froyo slate and looking forward to a more suitable iteration of Android, which a senior official at the company has today clarified to mean Honeycomb, describing it as the “tablet PC-version” of the OS. He’s even gone beyond the call of PR duty in placing a release schedule for the 8.9-inch LG Pad in the first quarter of 2011, boasting that it’ll come with a dual-core Tegra 2 chip inside. That sounds terribly delicious to us, as does the note that LG has worked hard to accommodate the needs and wants of European and North American consumers — the release window is explicitly said to be for both domestic and overseas markets.

Update: We’ve just heard back from LG on the matter and the company says it has nothing official to tell us. It’d seem whoever the cited official in this piece is, he was dishing details that LG doesn’t want the world to know yet. LG’s PR team has also pulled a tweet about this story, ostensibly to cover its tracks.

LG Pad coming in Q1 2011, with Android Honeycomb, dual-core Tegra 2, and 8.9-inch screen originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Nov 2010 06:14:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Archos wasn’t going to settle for shipping a single Android device out today, no sirree — the French PMP specialists are pumping out these 7-inch Archos 70 Internet Tablets effective immediately. $279 buys you a 1GHz ARM Cortex A8 processor, 8GB of flash storage, and Android 2.2 running on an 800 x 480 capacitive multitouch screen, with an OpenGL ES 2.0 graphics accelerator, 802.11 b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth and a front-facing VGA camera in an 11oz, 0.43-inch thin package that screams to be held. Sadly, you still won’t find Android Market on here, though we’ll give Archos credit for ditching most of the proprietary connectors and ports, which should make sideloading your own apps somewhat less of a chore. (There’s also a microSDHC card slot.) Expect a 250GB hard-drive model to debut any day now for $350… along with our full review.

[Thanks, androidboi]

Archos 70 Internet Tablet now shipping for $279 with 8GB storage, Android 2.2 originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 02 Nov 2010 22:51:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Hybrid cars usually feature snazzy, high-tech designs, but few can compare with the Urbee — the first car to be manufactured entirely by 3-D printing. Developed by Kor Ecologic and Stratasys, the Urbee was created with an additive manufacturing process, whereby engineers add layers of printed material until finally arriving with a finished product — in this case, a whole car. As Fast Company explains, the car’s entire exterior (including the glass) was created from 3-D prints, with the help of Stratasys’s Dimension 3-D printers and a Fortus 3-D Production System.

As you can see in the video demonstration after the break, the Urbee actually works, too. It gets a cool 200 mpg on the highway, and a not too shabby 100 mpg while driving in the city. Once you’re done cruising around, you can charge it with a standard electrical outlet, wind power or a solar panel array. No word yet on when the Urbee might make its market debut, but a full-scale prototype will be on display at this week’s SEMA Show in Las Vegas, in case you want to check it out for yourself.

Continue reading Meet the Urbee Hybrid, The World’s First 3-D Printed Car

Meet the Urbee Hybrid, The World’s First 3-D Printed Car originally appeared on Switched on Tue, 02 Nov 2010 10:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If the damp blanket of leaves warming the ground is any indicator, then we’d say that fall has arrived in the Northern Hemisphere. That means Google’s Chrome OS is due. What better time for DigiTimes to cite sources from “component players” claiming that the first smartbooks featuring Google’s other operating system will launch later this month. According to the Taiwanese rumor rag, Google will follow its Nexus One strategy and be first from the gate with the launch of a self-branded Chrome OS notebook manufactured by Inventec — the ARM-based machine will not be sold through normal retail channels and is expectated to ship a very modest 60,000 to 70,000 units. Acer and HP are then rumored to be launching Quanta-manufactured Chrome OS gear as early as December while ASUS waits to gauge market reaction. Of course, if all of this is true then we should be getting a Google event press invite right about, well, now.

Google-branded Chrome OS smartbook launching this month? originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 02 Nov 2010 02:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The federal Conservatives have reintroduced legislation that would allow police and intelligence officials to intercept online communications and get personal information from internet service providers about their subscribers without first obtaining a warrant.

In the latest installment of anti-trust drama in the upper echelons of technology industry giants, Google has filed suit against the United States Government. The complaint is that when the US was looking at options to improve their messaging functionality, they specifically looked for only Microsoft products, and didn’t once…

On Wednesday, the Space Shuttle Discovery will lift off for the final time. Named for three separate British ships (Captain James Cook’s HMS
Discovery, Henry Hudson’s Discovery, and Captain George Nares’s HMS Discovery),
the shuttle will have seen 39 missions in 26 years.

In honor of the ship's retirement, we've pulled together
some of the Discovery's most exciting moments in its quarter-century of space
travel. 

August 30, 1984: The shuttle's maiden voyage is the twelfth shuttle mission, overall. The launch is originally scheduled for June 25, but is pushed back due to a number of technical concerns. The mission, lead by Henry Hartsfield, Jr. (his second spaceflight) lasts just over six days.

April 12, 1985: Utah Senator Jake Garn tags along on Discovery’s fourth flight, becoming the first sitting member of Congress in space.

June 17, 1985: STS-51-G payload specialist, Sultan Salman al-Saud, grandson of King Ibn Saud, becomes the first Saudi citizen, first Muslim, and first member of a royal family in space.

September 29, 1988: Deemed “Return to Space,” the seventh Discovery mission is the first U.S. spaceflight since 1986’s Challenger explosion. The flight is also the first to include an all-veteran crew since Apollo 11 in 1969.

April 24, 1990: The Discovery launches a 24,500 pound telescope called the Hubble, the largest and most advanced space telescope to date.

October 29, 1998: Discovery passenger Senator John Glenn becomes the oldest man in space, at age 77. Fellow passenger Pedro Duque, meanwhile, becomes the first Spaniard in space.

October 11, 2000: Discovery’s 28th flight is the 100th shuttle launch overall. The mission lasts 12 days and includes four space walks.

July 26, 2005: The Discovery marks another disaster. This time deemed “Return to Flight,” the shuttle is the first to lift off since the 2003 Columbia disaster.

August 28, 2009: The payload of STS-128 includes, among other things, a treadmill called C.O.L.B.E.R.T., named after television’s truthiest newscaster.

April 5, 2010: At 15 days, STS-131 becomes the longest mission for the Discovery to date. For the first time ever, four women are in space simultaneously. This is also the first time that two Japanese astronauts are in space at the same time.

November 3, 2010: The 39th flight is scheduled to be the Discovery’s last. The mission will last 11 days.

It’s out, right on schedule and it’s a biggie. The new Fall 2010 Xbox Live Dashboad update is being rolled out right now in preparation for Kinect to hit shelves on November 4th (or November 10th in Europe). The update includes Netflix search, Zune music, an ESPN entertainment hub, and much much more. Since you probably overslept anyway and don’t have time to do the update before heading into the coal mines, why not check out our in depth preview of the update from a few weeks ago. Go ahead, don’t cost nothin’. Otherwise, Major Nelson has the full breakdown in the link below.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Xbox 360 Dashboard update is out! originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 01 Nov 2010 05:55:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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So cute story… Point me to the author, please!

This being “fun fact day” because everybody’s been revealing their last-quarter results in the past 24 hours, Major Nelson has thrown out some numbers on his blog to show everyone how well the 360 is doing. Here we go:

• The are 42 million consoles sold in 35 countries.*
• In the last year alone there has been an 157 percent increase in the time spent watching movies and television on Xbox.
• 42 percent of Xbox LIVE Gold members in the US are watching an average of an hour of television and movies on their Xbox, every single day or more than 30 hours of digitally distributed television and movies a month.
• The 25 million members of Xbox LIVE around the world are each spending more than 30 hours per month on the service – that means cumulatively Xbox LIVE members are now logging more than one billion hours a month on the service.

He also says that the new dashboard update, which has been in beta for a little while now, will go live to the public “in the very near future,” which I would assume means “by the time Kinect is released next week.”

*My personal calculations put lifetime Xbox 360 sales at 44.6 million. I think Major Nelson is a quarter behind.