Category: GReader

In what appears to be a breakdown of tablet pricing and release dates that a “major US retailer” has provided its employees, the 10-inch HP TouchPad shows up for a refreshingly reasonable $500 (16GB) and $600 (32GB). Why, that’s right on par with iPad 2! About time. More »

The Centro Financiero Confinanzas (a.k.a. “the David Tower,” named after its investor David Brillembourg) stands half-complete in downtown Caracas and is Venezuela’s third largest skyscraper. More »

Announced at BlackBerry’s 2010 Developer Conference last fall, BBM Social Platform has just become available to interested third-party devs in beta form. Of course, you might be hoping that it opens BlackBerry Messenger to other (read: non-BlackBerry) platforms via API… but yeah, that’s not happening quite yet. Instead, the SDK allows folks developing for BlackBerry OS to integrate BBM capabilities into their own apps, and the list of capabilities is pretty extensive: you’ll be able to read and update user profiles, embed BBM chats inside your app, and transfer files, just to name a few of the big ones (with the user’s permission, of course). The current beta works for Java apps, while RIM’s hard at work crafting a new version for release in April that’ll add WebWorks web app compatibility.

RIM’s BBM Social Platform goes to open beta, lets devs bake BBM into BlackBerry apps originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 15 Mar 2011 17:08:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Google now owns a small Irish company called Green Parrot Pictures. Why should you care? Their video compression technology will allow for better looking, less stuttery video, packaged in smaller file sizes on YouTube. Win win. [YouTube] More »

Google now owns a small Irish company called Green Parrot Pictures. Why should you care? Their video compression technology will allow for better looking, less stuttery video, packaged in smaller file sizes on YouTube. Win win. [YouTube] More »

We’ve shared a few ways to boost your cell phone signal before, but technology weblog The Next Web shows us another way: just stick it in a glass. More »

via

A time-lapse video shows the multitude of quakes off Japan before and since the massive 9.0 quake of March 11.

Here’s a weird fun fact for you on a slow news Tuesday: there’s a very real familial link between Apple CEO Steve Jobs and TV’s Homer Simpson. Here’s how.

As some of you may know, Steve Jobs was put up for adoption as an infant. What you may not know is that Steve Jobs’ birth parents are Joanne Carole Schieble and Abdulfattah Jandali, who put him up for adoption because they weren’t married at the time.

Later, when they married, they had another child: Mona Jandali. However, Jandali abandoned both Mona and her mother when Mona was five. Joanne eventually remarried, at which point Mona decided to take her stepfather’s name and became Mona Simpson.

In the 80s, Mona’s career as a novelist flourished, and she published several successful novels. During this time, she also married television writer and producer Richard Appel, who worked on The Simpsons and appropriated his wife’s name for that of Homer Simpson’s biological mother in the episode “Mother Simpson”.

To summarize: Steve Jobs is the biological brother of the real-life inspiration for Homer Simpson’s mother. Or, put a more fanciful way, Apple’s CEO is Homer Simpson’s spiritual uncle.

The more you know, eh?

Last time daylight savings time rolled around, iPhone users got a pretty big surprise when recurring alarms started going off at the wrong time. This time around, users are still having issues, though they seem to be a bit less common, a bit more varied, and much more anecdotal. Some are reporting their phones aren’t jumping forward at all, while others are reporting their phone did then jumped back, or other similar problems. Our recommendation? Don’t rely too much on your iPhone’s clock for the next few days, and hopefully we’ll find a solution soon. Hit the link to read more. [Engadget] More »

An alternative medicine group is advising Japanese radiation victims to use unproven and worthless treatments.

Many of us probably right-click on links to open them in new tabs or search for text on Google. Reader hackbreaker shows us another quick way: just drag links or text to the tab bar. More »

Naveen:

Tibetan Mastiffs are known to be the world’s most expensive dogs, and now, a Red Tibetan Mastiff puppy has grabbed the title of the world’s most expensive dog after being sold for about £1 million ($1.6 million). The Tibetan Mastiff, also known as Do-khyi, is an ancient breed and type of domestic dog originating with nomadic cultures of Central Asia. According to the puppy’s breeder Lu Liang, Big Splash (or “Hong Dong” in Chinese) is 11 months old, stands nearly 3 ft. high and weighs over 180lbs. The Mastiff was given a diet of chicken and beef, done with exotic Chinese delicacies like sea cucumber and abalone. Lu runs the Tibetan Mastiff Garden in Laoshan, near the eastern Chinese city of Qingdao. He said…

He is a perfect specimen. He has excellent genes and will be a good breeding dog. When I started in this business, ten years ago, I never thought we would see such a price.

Although, the sale details haven’t been revealed, Mr. Lu has said that the buyer, a multi-millionaire coal baron from the north of China, paid 10 million Yuan (£945,000) for the Red Tibetan Mastiff puppy. He further said…

I could see he loved the puppy, or I would not have sold him. The buyer told me he thought he was a good investment. As a male dog, he can be hired out to other breeders for as much as 100,000 yuan a shot. He could recoup his money in just a couple of years.

Back in 2009, Chinese millionaire Ms. Wang bought a Tibetan Mastiff named Yangtze River Number Two for $582,000. This lucky dog (world’s second most expensive now) was escorted to his new home by a motorcade of 30 black limousines.

Via: Telegraph

Those of you who eagerly downloaded the final version of Internet Explorer 9 earlier today and raced off to play some royalty-free WebM video would have been disappointed – until now.

In a tongue-in-cheek post spotted by Google Operating System earlier today, the search engine giant announced a free WebM plug-in…

Internet Explorer 9 represents Microsoft’s big push to get back into the browser game, featuring support for many new HTML5 specs (and standards in general), a new interface, and significant performance improvements. More »

Indilinx, the company responsible for designing the Barefoot SSD controller, has today agreed to hand its future over to the capable lads and ladies of OCZ Technology in exchange for $32 million in common OCZ stock. The companies have announced a definitive agreement for the chipmaker’s acquisition, which OCZ is performing in order to gobble up a set of 20 yummy patents and patent applications while also expanding its presence in embedded, hybrid storage and industrial markets. Indilinx will continue its current operations, including providing controllers and firmware to other OEMs, and OCZ too will continue to use others’ wares, namedropping its long-term partner SandForce as among the outside companies that will be supplying it with SSD goodies. So it’s business as usual unless and until this partnership spawns some lightning-fast combination of software and hardware that forces us to hear that cursed “exclusive” word again. Ah well, best of luck of luck to them.

Continue reading OCZ buys Indilinx, probably has designs on building its own SSD controllers

OCZ buys Indilinx, probably has designs on building its own SSD controllers originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 14 Mar 2011 23:08:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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