Reality Bites
Android: If you’d like to be able to tell who’s emailing, texting, or calling you without even taking your phone out of your pocket, free app WhoIsIt will let you assign specific ringtones and vibration patterns to each contact on your phone. More »
“The highest function of love is that it makes the loved one a unique and irreplaceable…
Can the Xbox Kinect can help surgeons? A number of doctors in Canada thing so.They’ve been using the gesture-based peripheral to access photos, helping guide the surgery.
The doctors needed to access photos without having to touch anything. This allowed them to perform surgery more quickly, without having to stop to wash their hands. This may well be the first time ever that a hospital used a video game console as a guide in surgery.
The doctor has also claimed that he plans to use the Kinect more often in both surgeries, and other areas in the hospital.
Via TG Daily
The FDA is reportedly set to announce a decision that would force movie theater operators to post calorie counts next to their items in the same way that restaurant chains must. Not surprisingly, the theater owners are popping mad about this possibility.
According to a piece in today’s L.A. Times, the National Association of Theatre Owners has been lobbying the FDA and congressional staff members to exempt movie theaters from the nutritional labeling requirement.
“We’re not restaurants where people go to eat and satisfy themselves,” the group’s general counsel told the paper. “It’s dinner and a movie, not dinner at a movie.”
Of course, movie theater food is often more expensive than dinner… and profitable for the theater chains.
The Times quotes the CFO of Regal Entertainment Group as saying, “We sell a bucket of popcorn for about $6. Our cost in that $6 bucket of popcorn is about 15 cents or 20 cents. So if that cost doubles, it doesn’t really hurt me that much.”
But it might be hurting the people that eat the popcorn. A 2009 study by the spoilsports at the Center for Science in the Public Interest found that a large popcorn serving contained upward of 1,460 calories, almost as much as downing three Big Macs (approx. 1,600 calories).
Should theaters have to post calorie counts just like everyone else, or is movie theater food somehow different than restaurant food?
What’s in the popcorn? Cinemas would rather not have to say [L.A. Times]
Earlier today we reported a story from Digitimes, which stated that Motorola was winding down production on the Xoom. According to the numbers, the total units shipped is set to drop dramatically after this month, from around 500,000 units, down to 300,000 a month, eventually tapering off altogether by the end of June.
The humble MiFi from Novatel has, in various guises for myriad carriers, saved our bacon on repeated occasions at press events, feeding up sweet connectivity when 3G USB modems were few or ineffective. Now it can make that bacon sizzle, too, receiving DLNA certification and becoming a little media streamer. Content loaded to the MiFi’s microSD card will now be served up to any compatible media player, receiver, or computer, which includes watching movies on iPads and Xboxes and PS3's. Oh, my! It remains to be seen whether existing 2372s will be upgradeable to support DLNA or whether it'll be new devices only, but the company has said that AT&T will be the first carrier to offer the service. So, there's something to look forward to, T-Mobile subscribers.
Continue reading Novatel’s 2372 MiFi gets DLNA certified, can serve up some beats with those bytes
Novatel’s 2372 MiFi gets DLNA certified, can serve up some beats with those bytes originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 23 Mar 2011 15:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Just days before MTS finally launches their long-awaited now-called “4G” network, TELUS has gone out and announced they will be investing $22 million in Manitoba this year with their own “4G” network. In a press release TELUS stated they’ll expand beyond the Winnipeg and into Brandon, Selkirk, Steinbach, Portage la Prairie and Victoria Beach. “In […]
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It turns out that Internet Explorer 9, in its 64-bit version, apparently has a different, slower JavaScript engine than its 32-bit counterpart. We didn’t know that when starting our browser tests, but we’ve now updated our tests with IE 9 32-bit results, at least in the JavaScript and CSS categories. Doing so gave IE 9 32-bit an edge in at least one category. Thanks to the eagle-eyed commenters and Twitter correspondents who pointed this out. More »
Previously the American Academy of Pediatrics said children more than one year old could switch to forward-facing seats.
Today we’re releasing a bunch of new features in Google Drawings, designed to make editing easier and more collaborative.
Presence + Revision history
Google Docs has always been designed to make it easy to work on documents together. We’re making that easier in drawings by introducing two new features. First, we’ve added presence highlights around shapes. The color that you see beside a person’s name in the sidebar is now used to highlight the shapes which that person has selected. In the example below, mfrederick is editing the triangle at the edge of the drawing.
When you’re working on drawings together it’s really helpful to see who made which change and to be able to go back to previous versions. That’s just what we’ve added. We took the new revisions interface from documents and spreadsheets and brought it to the drawings editor. Now it’s easy to see all the edits that went into your drawing. You’ll also see the full revision history for any drawings that you’ve already created.
Colors are a special type of formatting because in drawings you can choose any color value you want. This feature is nice because it lets you make your drawings just so, but it can be frustrating because you need to remember any custom color codes in order to make sure that different shapes had the same colors. You can now solve that problem with the format painter, but we’ve also made matching colors even easier by adding a recent color palette. The palette shows you up to eight custom colors that you’ve used in your drawings.
Posted by: Misha Leder, Software Engineer
You wake. You eat. You work. You read a few articles on Engadget. You sleep. You attempt to repeat. Life’s not always quite so simple, but the mesmerizing image shown above does a great job of showcasing the patterns that seem to keep us all on track. This particular piece is entitled Sleep Patterns, crafted by one Laurie Frick, and was created by converting EEG traces into watercolor. There’s plenty more where this came from in the source link below, but we’d caution you not to fall into some sort of eternal loop of checking back daily — unless, of course, you’re looking to disrupt your own patterns for the sake of art.
Visualized: life’s most basic patterns displayed as color-coded charts originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 23 Mar 2011 12:14:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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In an ideal world, your Android’s apps, their settings, and your system settings would automatically back up to the cloud so that if you lost your phone, bought a new one, or installed a new custom ROM, setting up a fresh device with everything in place would be a piece of cake. The good news: This utopian Android backup actually is possible. Here’s how to set it up. More »
Chrome 11 goes beta with speech-to-text capabilities originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 23 Mar 2011 11:52:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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On Monday, Google expressed its belief that its email users in China were experiencing “a government blockage carefully designed to look like the problem is with Gmail.” Now, as is par for this thorny course, the Chinese state has come out with a terse rebuttal, saying simply that “this is an unacceptable accusation.” The retort was, says the BBC, part of a regular news conference on Tuesday and it doesn’t appear that any more time was spent on the subject. Which is odd since most people would tend to act to prevent something they see as unacceptable — but then we suppose China already has a pretty long list of folks it’d like to shut up, Google’s just gonna have to get in line and wait its turn. There’s a good citizen.
China, predictably, denies Google’s accusations of Gmail tampering originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 23 Mar 2011 10:14:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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We noted Firefox 3’s spectacular eight million downloads in a day when discussing the recent launch of IE9, and that mark shall live on as a record for another day. Firefox 4 looks to have a had a thoroughly successful debut, going past the five million milestone within the first 24 hours of its release, but it hasn’t quite been able to overshadow its predecessor. And before you go comparing its numbers to the latest Internet Explorer, do be cognizant that FF4 released on a wider set of platforms, rendering direct stat comparisons a little dicey. That’s not stopping StatCounter, however, who notes that the latest Firefox already has a 1.95 percent share of the browser market, almost exactly double what IE9 can claim so far. Better get working on that XP compatibility, eh Microsoft?
Update: Mozilla CEO Gary Kovacs has the final stats for the first 24 hours and it’s actually even higher than we thought: 7.1 million downloads around the globe. That’s in addition to three million users already running the release candidate for Firefox 4, which turned into the final release. Good work!
Firefox 4 clocks up 7.1 million downloads within first 24 hours, fails to beat Firefox 3 record (updated) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 23 Mar 2011 08:57:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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What happens in this picture is absolutely beyond me. All I know is that it was taken in Italy, and the goats in case (Alpine Ibex) are climbing the walls of the dam to lick the salt off the construction. Click on the picture to make it larger.
Picture source
The keyword here is obviously “considers,” but it looks like Japan’s space agency, JAXA, is indeed seriously thinking about using artificial intelligence to improve their rocket launches. As JAXA scientist Yasuhiro Morita explains, as opposed to simply being “automatic” as rockets are today, an “artificially intelligent” rocket would be able to keep watch on its condition, determine the cause of any malfunction, and potentially even fix it itself. According to JAXA, that would not only make rocket launches more efficient, but more cost-effective as well given the reduced manpower needs. That’s not the only new measure being explored to cut costs, though — as Space.com reports, JAXA’s new Epsilon launch vehicle is also being built using fewer, but more advanced components, which promises to let it be moved to the launch pad nearly fully assembled. It’s currently set to launch sometime in 2013, although it’s not yet clear how much it will actually be relying on AI if such a system is put in place.
Japan’s space agency considers using rockets with artificial intelligence originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 23 Mar 2011 00:13:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Now that it’s received its big US debut courtesy of Sprint and under the name EVO View 4G, HTC’s Flyer tablet is free to, um, fly under the radar with a WiFi version this spring, exclusively through Best Buy. Specs on the Flyer are somewhat atypical for the current crop of Android tablets, as it opts for Gingerbread instead of Honeycomb and a 1.5GHz Qualcomm chip intead of the popular Tegra 2 dual-core solution. That, and it’s a 7-inch tablet with a capacitive stylus and an aluminum unibody shell. Notably, this WiFi-centric variant looks set to beat the WiMAX-capable EVO View (which Sprint expects in the summer) to market, so we’ll be keeping a very curious eye on pricing as and when it is announced. For now, we have a retailer and a rapidly dwindling release window. Oh, and a press release, which you’ll find just past the break, augmented with a neat little promo video.
[Thanks, Michael]
Continue reading HTC’s WiFi-only Flyer launching exclusively with Best Buy ‘this spring’
HTC’s WiFi-only Flyer launching exclusively with Best Buy ‘this spring’ originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 22 Mar 2011 19:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Boeing took a huge — both literally and figuratively — step in the development of the largest commercial jet in its history when the 747-8 took to the skies for the first time. Granted, the airframe’s cargo version has already logged over 1,600 hours up in the air, but putting the 250-foot passenger plane with a 224-foot wingspan — 19 feet longer and 13 feet wider than the gargantuan 747-400 — through its first few paces without incident is no small feat. The 747-8 borrows some of the 787 Dreamliner’s weight-trimming tech for better fuel efficiency and lower operational costs than older 747s and jumbo jet competition from Airbus. We just hope it didn’t inherit the 787’s penchant for delays as well. If all goes according to plan, the new jetliner should complete the 600 test flight hours needed for FAA certification in time to deliver the first 747-8s to customers by the end of the year. We doubt airlines will use the plane’s extra space to give us shlubs riding coach any more legroom, but at least its improved all-around efficiency should make flying a little cheaper. PR’s after the break.
Boeing’s biggest jet takes flight, promises lowest ‘seat mile’ cost of any commercial airliner originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 22 Mar 2011 19:03:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Google scores a patent for its ‘Doodles’ originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 22 Mar 2011 18:20:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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