The hunt for the next Nexus phone (also known as the Nexus Prime) is on, and it looks like we could see it donning Ice Cream Sandwich in time for Halloween. According to a report in Korea’s Electronic Times, those oh so familiar “insiders” are fingering an October launch for the Samsung handset. It will apparently rock a 4.5-inch HD AMOLED display and a 1.5GHz dual core processor, which squares mighty nicely with previous reports. Of course, we’ll believe it when we see it — or at least an official announcement — but for now, we’re keeping the Ice Cream Sandwich dream alive.
Word ’round the campfire is, HP may be prepping to spin off its PC business. Though Hewlett-Packard is the world’s largest computer company, desktops and laptops are a relatively low profit margin business. Obviously, there’s no confirmation yet that such a split will happen, but with the recent focus on tablets and smartphones, and CEO Leo Apotheker’s own admission that he’d like to expand into software and services, the move would make sense. According to Bloomberg the announcement could come as soon as today, during the company’s quarterly earnings call, where it’s also expected to reveal a $10 billion purchase of software company Autonomy Corp. We’ll be listening in live later, so check back this afternoon to see if HP sets its PC business free.
Whether you’re organizing a trip overseas or a picnic at a local park, knowing the weather forecast is a crucial part of the planning process. Today, we’re adding a weather layer on Google Maps that displays current temps and conditions around the globe, and will hopefully make travel and activity planning easier.
To add the weather layer, hover over the widget in the upper right corner of Google Maps and select the weather layer from the list of options. When zoomed out, you’ll see a map with current weather conditions from weather.com for various locations, with icons to denote sun, clouds, rain and so on. You can also see cloud coverage, thanks to our partners at the U.S. Naval Research Lab. And, if you look closely, you can also tell if it’s day or night around the world by sun and moon icons.
Enabling the weather layer also gives you an instant weather report for friends and family living around the world. For example, it looks like my family in London isn’t experiencing the best summer weather right now:
Weather near London, UK
Clicking on the weather icon for a particular city will open an info window with detailed data like current humidity and wind conditions, as well as a forecast for the next four days. Below is the upcoming forecast for my location in wintertime Sydney, which seems to have the similar weather as London!
Weather near Sydney, Australia in satellite view
Changing the units of wind speed (Mph/KMph/Mps) and temperature (F/C), and enabling or disabling the clouds (when you’re zoomed out), can also be done from the left-hand panel.
Weather left hand panel
Get started now and check out the weather layer here.
The head of the agency in charge of federal elections says it's time to modernize Canada's elections, including testing online voting and ending a ban on publishing early election results.
Windows president Steven Sinofsky has confirmed that Windows 8 is getting an app store. He casually dropped the scoop whilst listing the software’s dev teams as if he was listing the week’s groceries. Such a tease, that man.
For years, radiometric dating of lunar rock samples has suggested that the formation of the Moon occurred roughly 4.57 billion years ago — around the same time as the birth of the solar system itself. More »
At bloody last, Google is implementing the best invention since toilet paper rolls: Infinite scroll! This video shows how it works right now, in the testing phase. More »
In a case that has drawn international attention, jurors on Wednesday watched video showing an Alaskan mother squirting hot sauce in the mouth of her adopted son.
While Microsoft is busy readying the much talked about Windows 8 for release, a new patent application has popped up that could reveal even bigger — or at least faster — things to come. According to the filing for “Fast Machine Booting Through Streaming Storage,” which was submitted in February of last year and released last week, Redmond is looking at creating a system that could stream an entire OS to just about anything with a screen. The proposed setup would enlist a series of storage devices, both remote and local, to act as a virtual hard disk, allowing anything from a set top box to a tablet to boot almost instantaneously. We don’t know about you, but we’ve already started a list of ways to spend the extra seconds.
Well, it’s taken long enough, but Google has finally updated its Reader app for Android and added support for Honeycomb. That’s right RSS addicts, you can now peruse your feeds in full two-pane glory on your Xoom, Galaxy Tab 10.1 or othercomparableslate. The move to version 1.0.1 doesn’t just benefit tablet owners either — the small screen UI has received a fresh coat of paint that’s a tad more polished. As far as new features, there doesn’t seem to be anything Earth-shattering, but the ability to quickly share posts via social networks or add them to your Read It Later list on a tablet is greatly appreciated. Hit up the Android Market to download the latest edition — seriously, right now.
Earlier this year, NVIDIA teased us all with the promise of its forthcoming Kal-El SoC, indicating an August debut. Well, we’re currently in the thick of that hot and hazy month with no clear sign of an incoming quad-core tablet, but certainly more release gossip. According to Fudzilla, multiple sources have confirmed ASUS’ next Eee Pad Transformer will indeed be first in line to pack four cores, lending credence to Chairman Jonney Shih’s claims the tab would be “impressive.” Concrete launch details for the slate have yet to be announced, but if Shih’s pre-CES timeline pans out, you’ll only have four long months to wait for a Glow Ball hands-on.
During a talking-head interview on Britain's Channel 4 News, a UFO zipped by the head of MP Tom Watson, prompting confused viewers to contact the television station. Honestly, folks! The naivety here astounds me — any self-respecting citizen knows that there are UFOs in the background of every news broadcast. More »
In the timeless masterpiece Armageddon, by auteur Michael Bay, Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck were sent into space to blow up an asteroid headed straight for Earth. Now, in real life, scientists are going to do the same thing. More »
CBC will continue to broadcast analog over-the-air television signals from 22 transmitters that could have been shut down after the mandatory changeover to digital on Aug. 31.
According to AllThingsD, Best Buy may be sitting on a pile of over 200,000 unsold webOS TouchPads. And the retailer wants to send them back to HP. More »
You may have caught wind of one sly fox unofficially popping up over the weekend. Well, as we reported, that fox — specifically Firefox 6 — is now officially ready for your downloading pleasure. If you’re a diehard Mozilla fan, or just an armchair browser expert, you’re probably already hip to the new Firefox rapid refresh cycle that’s seen three releases in the past five months. If not, the folks at Mozilla sent along a couple of nifty graphics (available after the break) to show you how the new timeline works. Alternately, if you’re not interested in how your latest install made its way to your device, feel free to download the real deal at the source links below.
