Reality Bites
Everybody’s talking about George Lucas having already filmed his mysterious live action Star Wars TV show today. Just a reminder, we debunked this rumor last week. Sorry, there’s no huge stash of never-before-seen live-action Star Wars in the Lucas Bunker. More »
Well, the Pentagon is finally fed up with hackers picking on its buddies and foreign intelligence taking shots at its computer systems, and has decided that such cyber attacks can constitute an act of war. Of course, the powers that be won’t be bombing you for simply sending them some spyware, but attempts to sabotage US infrastructure (power grids, public transit, and the like) may be met with heavy artillery. It’s unclear how our government will identify the origin of an attack or decide when it’s serious enough to start shooting, but Uncle Sam is looking to its allies to help create a consensus answer for those questions. The retaliatory revelation is a part of the Pentagon’s new cyber strategy that’ll be made public in June — so saboteurs beware, your next internet incursion might get you an ICBM in your backyard.
Pentagon says cyber attacks are acts of war: send us a worm, get a missle in return? originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 31 May 2011 14:43:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Simple webapp Friends to Gmail converts your Facebook friends list into a Gmail-compatible CSV file complete with birthdays, location, bios, work history, and hometown. What’s the point? As the developer points out: More »
A mediatator has been appointed in Saskatchewan’s teacher contract dispute, and as a result all job action is suspended, the province says.
As far as publicity stunts go, this is pretty great: a giganto-sized orange Hot Wheels set. And unlike the ones you played with as a tyke, the car didn’t go crashing into a wall, but broke a distance world record. More »
As far as publicity stunts go, this is pretty great: a giganto-sized orange Hot Wheels set. And unlike the ones you played with as a tyke, the car didn’t go crashing into a wall, but broke a distance world record. More »
The Xbox and Xbox 360 consoles from Microsoft has been promoted by the company as a game console first and foremost. However, Microsoft has announced that the console is being used more and more for things other than gaming. In a new post on Microsoft’s official blog site. the company’s…
Generally, shouting commands at the internet isn’t going to get you very far but, if you’re just yelling a few destinations and search terms, Chrome extension Chaufr can take you where you need to go. A previous add-on, Speechify, let you speak to fill input fields, but couldn’t help you actually navigate the web. Chaufr, on the other hand, lets you simply say the magic word — “Engadget” — and it drops you right at our online doorstep. You can also use it to perform searches by saying Wikipedia, Google, Amazon, YouTube, or Yahoo followed by whatever it is you’re looking for. It worked well enough in our brief hands-on, but we do have one nit to pick — activating voice input requires you click on an icon in the tool bar then click on a microphone in the drop down menu. (Can’t a brother get a keyboard shortcut?) You can try it out for yourself by clicking on the source link.
Chaufr lets you shout searches, yell URLs at Chrome originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 31 May 2011 10:51:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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A night of fireworks, lightning, and a comet hanging on the sky separating them. It’s like a painting of Heaven, Earth and Hell by Hieronymus Bosch. But it’s not a painting. It’s a real sky. It happened in Perth, Australia. More »
We’ve been holding out hope for Pixel Qi devices for years, ever since we first heard that the OLPC spin-off would begin manufacturing its displays for use by any OEM looking for a battery-sipping LCD. Unfortunately, Mary Lou’s LCDs, capable of switching between a sunlight-readable reflective mode and full-color transmissive state, have had limited uptake by some less than desirable partners. Still, the team has returned to Computex with the 7-inch (1024 x 600) panel that was teased in December last year and a new higher resolution 10-inch (1280 x 800) panels offering an 80 percent power savings over conventional LCDs, according to Pixel Qi. In fact, the 10-inch panel consumes just 2.7W in color mode or 0.4W in reflective “eReader” mode.
We had the chance to see the new displays up close here at Computex and were immediately struck by the improvement in pixel density on the 10-inch panel. Making the leap to WVGA has been a major boon, as identical images looked sharper and better-defined than on the 1024 x 600 current-gen Pixel Qi display. The brightness on the new screen is lower than on its predecessor, but that’s because the company still hasn’t finalized things — we’re promised significantly better readability with the backlight off in the final product and brighter pictures when it’s on. The 7-incher, originally intended for mass production in the second quarter will now sample in Q3, to be followed by the more pixel-dense 10-inch model, which will hit production in Q4. Scope out the newness in the gallery below or jump past the break for video.
Pixel Qi takes aim at Android tablets with higher-res 10-inch and 7-inch reflective LCDs (hands-on) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 31 May 2011 06:36:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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At a time when ARM and Android are dominating the mobile computing world, Intel’s only just starting to catch up with some green robot-friendly prototypes, like these Oak Trail-based 10-inch tablets at Computex 2011. Starting from the left we have the Intel Green Ridge, Foxconn F150, Quanta QXZI, an unnamed Compal device, Intel Marco Polo 2, and Intel Carrot. Sadly, Intel wouldn’t give the names of the ODMs behind its own reference tablets, so your guess is just as good as ours.
With the exception of the Gingerbread-powered Foxconn slate, these were all running on Honeycomb 3.0.1 OS — well, we say running, but just barely. As you’ll see in our hands-on video after the break, most of the devices were struggling to keep up with the launcher animation, and needless to say, Intel wasn’t keen on letting us test video playback on them. We also noticed that Android Market was missing on the prototypes, but Intel assured us that it’ll be available on the final products, and that current Android apps are already supported by Oak Trail. In terms of build quality it left much to be desired, though this is forgivable at a trade show; it’s the software that we’re concerned with. From what we’ve seen here at Computex, Android on Oak Trail is far from ready, so it’ll be interesting to see if Acer can actually pull off a July launch for its rumored Oak Trail Honeycomb tablet.
Update: OK, our in-depth hands-on video is finally working. Check it out after the break.
Intel shows off Oak Trail-based Android Honeycomb tablets, confirms Android Market support originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 31 May 2011 03:42:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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The race to smash linguistic barriers with simultaneous speech-to-speech translation is still wide open, and Japanese mobile operator NTT DoCoMo has just joined Google Translate and DARPA on the track. Whereas Google Translate’s Conversation Mode was a turn-based affair when it was demoed back in January, requiring each party to pause awkwardly between exchanges, NTT DoCoMo’s approach seems a lot more natural. It isn’t based on new technology as such, but brings together a range of existing cloud-based services that recognize your words, translate them and then synthesize new speech in the other language — hopefully all before your cross-cultural buddy gets bored and hangs up. As you’ll see in the video after the break, this speed comes with the sacrifice of accuracy and it will need a lot of work after it’s trialled later in the year. But hey, combine NTT DoCoMo’s system with a Telenoid robot or kiss transmission device and you can always underline your meaning physically.
NTT DoCoMo exhibits on-the-fly speech translation, lets both parties just talk (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 30 May 2011 22:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Canadian postal workers are prepared to strike at midnight Thursday if they don’t get anywhere with their latest contract demands, the union says.
Canadian postal workers are prepared to strike at midnight Thursday night if they don’t get anywhere with their latest contract demands, the union says.
So you’ve become the Memorial Day grill master, but you pull your grill out of the garage only to find that it’s a sea of dirt and grime. Luckily, it’s pretty simple to give your grill a proper cleaning before setting it up for the summer. More »
The government of Saskatchewan says a decision by Germany to get out of the nuclear power business will not affect uranium sales.
Well, he’s not a mad man. He’s Joerg Sprave, a very nice guy who built the slingshot of mass destruction among many other deadly slingshots. In his own words: More »
Saskatchewan’s 12,000 teachers are starting the next phase of job action – withdrawing all voluntary services.
