Scientists propose a ‘journey to the mantle of the Earth’

This particular "journey" may not involve any humans descending into the Earth, but that doesn't mean it isn't still plenty ambitious — a pair of scientists are now proposing to drill to the Earth's mantle and bring back some samples, effectively picking up where the first attempt to do so left off some fifty years ago. Of course, the key word here is "proposing," but the scientists, Damon Teagle and Benoît Ildefonse, say that we now have the technology and knowledge necessary to do so, and that drilling could begin by 2020 if everything goes as planned. They're looking to get things underway well before that, however, and are already planning an expedition in the Pacific as soon as next month where they say they will "bore further into the oceanic crust than ever before."

Scientists propose a ‘journey to the mantle of the Earth’ originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 01 Apr 2011 08:35:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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April Fools’ Day roundup: Google overload edition (updated)

Ah, April 1st. It’s that time of the year again when the internet is rife with odd news and pranks. As before, news sites like us end up with a healthy stream of tips throughout April Fools’ Day (thanks, by the way), so let us round up some of the best findings for your comedic appetite. Contenders include the usual suspects like Google and ThinkGeek, the former of which dominating the gigglesphere this year with some new “features.” We also have some interesting submissions from Hulu, a font company, and probably plenty more to come as the day progresses, so keep watching this space as we add new entries to this post. Right, let the fun commence after the break.

Continue reading April Fools’ Day roundup: Google overload edition (updated)

April Fools’ Day roundup: Google overload edition (updated) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 01 Apr 2011 07:17:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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BlackBerry Touch / Monaco gets manhandled, said to get official in May

Our interest in the BlackBerry Touch (codename Monaco) was piqued when we first caught wind of the device, and we had a feeling it’d be making its way into the wild ever since one showed up in Verizon red around mid-Feburary. Now, BGR has managed to procure an unreleased prototype, and we’ve gotta say that we like what we’re seeing. According to the pub, it should get official at BlackBerry World in May, and it’ll run OS 6.1 underneath that 800 x 480-pixel screen. The new BB6 is said to use a BlackBerry ID in place of a PIN for certain key functions — a necessary move for non-BB platforms rumored to be getting BBM (a historically PIN-based service). BGR also claims it won’t be getting the Storm nomenclature, so we apologize in advance to the SurePress fanboys. Either way, we’ve got an inkling that we’ll be hearing more as we get closer to May, but unfortunately our dreams of a super AMOLED-equipped Torch running stock Android with a BBM app will just remain figments of our imagination.

BlackBerry Touch / Monaco gets manhandled, said to get official in May originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 31 Mar 2011 18:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Images surface of the BlackBerry Touch (Monaco)

RIM’s upcoming 2011 device lineup was leaked a couple months ago and some of the devices have started to pop up online. Today thanks to BGR for showing the upcoming BlackBerry Touch (Monaco). This is the said to be the next evolution of the Storm series… it packs a 3.7-inch touchscreen with a resolution of […]

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HP enables Google Cloud Print on ePrint printers right out of the box

Man, remember when transferring data to your printer required a big fat cable and physical proximity to your ink spitter? Thankfully, we live in more refined times now and HP and Google have hooked up to deliver the first printers with driverless Cloud Print support, making the whole thing that extra bit easier. HP ePrint printers were already sophisticated enough to receive instructions via email and now they’re casting aside the need for a connected PC to talk to Google’s Cloud Print service as well. All you need is your machine’s @hpeprint.com email address and then you’re away, zipping pictures and text from your smartphone, tablet or laptop to the HP paper decorator. It’s all seamless and wireless and probably feels like the future when you’re doing it. We’d tell you, but we stopped printing stuff in 2004.

Continue reading HP enables Google Cloud Print on ePrint printers right out of the box

HP enables Google Cloud Print on ePrint printers right out of the box originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 31 Mar 2011 13:25:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Woodland Contraption Plays Bach, Peddles Phone

This gorgeous commercial — conceived by Morihiro Harano, the award-winning creative director of Drill, Inc. — features a sort of sloping marimba, down which a wooden ball rolls, producing an unadorned rendition of Bach’s Cantata 147. “We did not add any artificial music at all,” Harano tells the New York Times. The things people do to sell a wood-encased phone! Are we philistines for kinda digging Kristen Schaal’s Xperia PLAY spots more? (Answer: yes.)

Woodland Contraption Plays Bach, Peddles Phone originally appeared on Switched on Thu, 31 Mar 2011 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Google Cloud Print Ready printers now available

Imagine printing an important email from your Chrome notebook on your train ride to work, then finding the completed printout in the printer tray when you reach the office. Or printing your airline boarding pass from your smartphone to your home printer, so you can grab the printout on your way out the door. Today, we are one big step closer to this vision.

Last year, we launched Google Cloud Print, a service that enables users to print from any device, operating system, or browser to any printer without the need for drivers or a PC connection. The service can be used with any printer, but the most seamless experience is offered by Google Cloud Print Ready devices, a new generation of web-connected printers that don’t need to be attached to a computer. Today, HP has announced that all of its ePrint-enabled printers are Google Cloud Print Ready, in most cases right out of the box. With a Google Cloud Print Ready printer, you can print emails, documents and web pages from supported apps without having to hunt for drivers or printer cables.

You can already use Google Cloud Print on Chrome notebooks and in the mobile versions of Gmail and Google Docs. Many more supported apps are on the way. There are also a third-party Android app, Chrome extension and Firefox add-on to help you use Google Cloud Print in more places.

We’re also continuing to release enhancements to the Google Cloud Print service. We’ve released a Mac version of the Google Cloud Print connector for non-cloud printers in the Chrome beta channel. And over the next few days we’ll be enabling printer sharing for current Google Cloud Print users, so your family, friends and colleagues can print their documents from anywhere to anywhere.

Happy printing!

Posted by Abhijit Kalamkar, Software Engineer

HTC Flyer parades its many unique qualities in latest video from the company

Android tablets, everyone‘s got one, but none are quite like HTC’s 7-inch Flyer. Built out of a single piece of aluminum and a great many chunks of silicon, it struts along at a 1.5GHz pace, carries a handy dandy capacitive stylus called Scribe, and offers up a tablet-ified version of HTC’s Sense skin on a 1024 x 600 display. It’s also the only portable of its kind (so far) to offer the OnLive cloud gaming service. So many features, you’d think someone would go to the effort of summarizing them, perhaps in the form of a stylish video, no? Well, HTC has done exactly that, and its latest product overview vid is embedded for you just after the break.

Continue reading HTC Flyer parades its many unique qualities in latest video from the company

HTC Flyer parades its many unique qualities in latest video from the company originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 31 Mar 2011 09:05:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Netflix beefing up service center in preparation for global launch

It’s no secret that Netflix has grand plans to expand its global footprint that now feeds media to some 20 million North American subscribers. Hell, the company was boasting of the “significant dollars” allocated to its 2011 international expansion plans just four months ago. While nothing’s official yet, we’ve unearthed a few tantalizing openings posted to the Netflix job site over the last few days that could point to an imminent launch. Notably, Netflix’s customer service call center in Hillsboro Oregon is gearing up to expand its scope of operations beyond North America. Two new job postings for a Training Supervisor and Quality Assurance Analyst both mention the need to prepare for “rapid” international expansion and “will support a specific country / region outside of North America.” The Training Supervisor is being hired specifically to educate customer service reps in preparation for that future international growth. Neflix is looking for fluency in English in addition to Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese (Brazilian and European), and Spanish (Latin American and European), leaving things pretty wide open with regard to the countries targeted for initial launch.

We do know that Netflix had plans to launch in the UK way back in 2004 — plans that were ultimately scrapped in order to focus on its core US business (and later Canada). But if not the UK then we should at least expect to see Netflix target the European continent first if a statement attributed to CEO Reed Hastings from way back in January of 2010 still rings true: “the big market for Hollywood content (after the U.S.) is Europe…Third is Asia. Fourth is the rest of the world.” Can’t let Amazon have the market to itself now can we Reed?

[Thanks, Chico]

Netflix beefing up service center in preparation for global launch originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 31 Mar 2011 02:57:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Samsung mass-producing 22-inch transparent LCD, your desktop monitor seethes with jealousy

They said they would do it, and by golly it’s nearly here — Samsung just revealed that its assembly lines are starting to churn out see-thru computer screens that don’t require power-sucking backlights to function. Unfortunately, it looks like the amazing AMOLED variety is still on the drawing board, but ambient light-powered LCDs are on the way, with Samsung offering a 22-inch, 1680 x 1050 resolution panel with a 500:1 contrast ratio to begin with. Sammy suggests we’ll see it in HDMI and USB-compatible monitors and suspects it’ll be used in advertising and teleconferencing first — which suggests this display won’t come cheap — but we all know the true killer app will be a nice big frameless laptop screen. We’ll take two, please. PR after the break.

Continue reading Samsung mass-producing 22-inch transparent LCD, your desktop monitor seethes with jealousy

Samsung mass-producing 22-inch transparent LCD, your desktop monitor seethes with jealousy originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 31 Mar 2011 00:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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