Reality Bites
When you’re aiming at a target two miles away, the slightest perturbation could end up causing a catastrophic miss – not good enough for today’s military. Until guns can aim themselves, snipers need the most accurate weapons possible. Engineers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory came up with a laser-guided correction system that ensures a shooter’s crosshairs are always on the mark. More »
Jack Dorsey’s über-popular credit card readers got a big thumbs-up from Cupertino this week. Square‘s devices are hitting Apple’s 235 US retail locations and Apple.com for $9.95 a pop — plus the 2.75 percent that the startup takes off the backend each time you use the reader — or you can always just sign up for a free one over on Square’s site. The iPhone / iPad / iPod touch plug-in accepts Visa, MasterCard, Discover, and yes, even American Express. The CEO of VeriFone will no doubt have plenty to say about the matter.
Update: It turns out you get a $10 redemption code in the box when you buy a Square reader at an Apple store, so it is still technically free (just not, you know, when you buy it).
[Thanks, Michael]
Apple Stores stocking Square credit card readers originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 21 Apr 2011 18:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Update: Peter Kafka, over at All Things Digital, backs up Reuters’ claim with some additional detail. Unlike Amazon’s approach with Cloud Player, Apple is actively seeking to license the music for its streaming service before launching. According to Kafka’s sources, Apple has already secured deals with two of the big four labels and plans to launch “pretty soon.” The deal would allow Apple to store a single master copy of a track on its servers and then share that track with multiple users. As Kafka describes the service, “The idea is that Apple will let users store songs they’ve purchased from its iTunes store, as well as others songs stored on their hard drives, and listen to them on multiple devices.”
Reuters: Apple set to launch cloud-based music service ahead of Google (update) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 21 Apr 2011 16:40:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Baseball commissioner Bud Selig expects the playoffs to expand from eight teams to 10 for the 2012 season. Selig said scheduling is the major issue of discussion, including how many games the new wild-card round will be.
If you’ve done any Kindling on your Xoom or your G-Slate or your Transformer or whatever little slice of Honeycomb you’re calling home, chances are you’ve noticed the app isn’t exactly optimized for the relatively big screen of your slate. Well, now it has been. As promised, Amazon has just pushed an update to the Kindle app that makes it decidedly more 3.0-friendly. Gone is the ugly list of books, replaced by a lovely grid of titles including cover art. Just tap to start reading. Text itself within the books is higher-res and page turning seems snappier too. Worth the download? For sure — especially since it’s still free.
Continue reading Amazon updates Kindle app for Honeycomb, shows that tablets really do exist
Amazon updates Kindle app for Honeycomb, shows that tablets really do exist originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 21 Apr 2011 15:27:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Continue reading Sharp announces WiFi-enabled Freestyle Aquos portable TV for Japan
Sharp announces WiFi-enabled Freestyle Aquos portable TV for Japan originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 21 Apr 2011 13:56:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
The Queen celebrates her 85th birthday, eight days before the wedding of her grandson, Prince William, and Kate Middleton.
An energy efficient Ford F-150 certainly sounds like an oxymoron, but the folks at Protean Electric have proven that even this gas guzzler can go green. So how’d they do it? Well, with in-wheel motors of course. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen this technology put to use, but if things go according to plan, Protean’s version of the in-wheel motor could be road ready as soon as next year. The things weigh 68 pounds (31 kilograms) a piece and offer 110 horsepower per wheel. When pared with this F-150 — rocking a custom battery — they offered up 100 mile-per-hour speeds and a range of 100 miles. That might not be enough to take you across the great state of Texas, but it’s certainly sufficient for tooting around the ranch. Head on over to the source link for more on Protean’s in-wheel technology.
Protean Electric in-wheel motors have the stuff to make an F-150 turn green originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 21 Apr 2011 12:27:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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We’ve seen plenty of wireless charging solutions that employ inductive power and other technologies to charge devices directly (heck, your next car may even have a Powermat in its console), but Panasonic’s Chargepad may be the first such product to charge, well, other chargers, rather than gadgets themselves. At launch, the Chargepad will only be compatible with two models, the QE-PL101-W and QE-PL201-W, which you can use to juice up cell phones and other USB-compatible devices on the go. We’d love to see the company embedding inductive charging components in its cameras and other devices instead, but if you’re an early adopter who happens to live in Japan, then you can expect to pay between $110-130 (open pricing, depending on battery capacity) for the Chargepad and a mobile charger when these hit stores on June 24.
Update: As reader SegueToNowhere points out, the Chargepad has a Qi logo, meaning it should work with your favorite Qi devices.
Panasonic Chargepad wirelessly juices up mobile chargers, nothing else originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 21 Apr 2011 12:06:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Long overdue: the mushy “suggested” evacuation now has some force behind it. The Japanese government has declared a 12 mile radius around the crippled Fukushima plant a mandatory evacuation zone—all but emergency workers are banned from entering. More »
Canadians share second place among the most contented people on the planet, according to a global survey that asked respondents to rate their own lives.
Chrome: You use Chrome on every computer where it’s possible. Wouldn’t it be nice if Chrome could, like Firefox, keep note of what tabs you had open on another system? The FreshStart extension does just that, and can also save your favorite tab sessions for easy loading. More »
Dark matter, we barely knew you, but before we ever found out if you were, in fact, the invisible hand pushing the cosmos apart, an Italian scientist ginned up a new theory that has anti-gravity doing the Yoko Ono to the universe’s merry band of galaxies. Massimo Villata’s theory assumes that both matter and antimatter have positive mass and energy density, which gets particles attracting particles and antiparticles attracting antiparticles through the force of gravity. To give dark matter the heave-ho from the galactic expansion equation, Villata supposes that the theory of general relativity applies in reverse to antimatter particles to create anti-gravity. And just as gravity pulls particles together, anti-gravity shoves them apart — giving the universe its burgeoning waistline, no clown, king, or colonel required.
Universe expansion: dark matter’s out, anti-gravity’s in, matter and antimatter still can’t get along originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 21 Apr 2011 08:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
We recently deemed the ASUS Eee Pad Transformer the “best Honeycomb tablet yet.” Admittedly that was before we got our hands on the T-Mobile G-Slate, but it’s still an awfully nice hunk of glass, and now we know just how much you’re going to have to pay to get one — and exactly when you can plunk down that credit card. The 10.1-inch Transformer with its 1280 x 800 IPS panel and 16GB of storage will cost you $399, while the 32GB version will set you back $499. That docking station, which kinda sorta turns it into a laptop? That costs $150. Units are expected to hit retail on Tuesday, April 26th, meaning you have just five days to scrounge together four or five Benjamins — plus tax, of course.
ASUS Eee Pad Transformer hits US on April 26th for $399 originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 21 Apr 2011 04:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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You already know that everything under the sun is available as Internet porn. But in a new book, two scientists investigate what our online porn searches say about human sexuality. Their work isn't without its problems, but they turn up some pretty interesting data on age, body size — and dicks. More »
Apple’s suing Samsung! Samsung’s wants to sue Apple! But Samsung sells Apple lots and lots and lots of components every year! So how are the legal squabbles affecting their relationship? According to Apple COO Tim Cook on Apple’s earnings call today, Samsung remains a “very valued” partner, no matter what the lawyers say, despite having “crossed the line in mobile.” I’ve seen this episode of Divorce Court. I just want to know who gets to keep the dog. More »
Chrome: If you do most of your reading in Google Reader, you probably find truncated RSS feeds—that is, feeds that only give you the first paragraph of a post—annoying. Convert them all into full feeds with one simple Chrome extension. More »
There are innovations in design and then there are innovations in design that make you cry joyful tears of double downs and chicken nugget soda cups. You already know which innovation this new dual-chambered Slurpee cup from 7-eleven is. More »
Yesterday we opened the map of the United States in Google Map Maker, enabling you to add your local knowledge of the U.S. to Google Maps. With this addition, the maps of 187 countries and regions—including Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands—are now available for editing by users to improve freshness and detail.
These edits are often visible immediately on Map Maker, but aren’t seen by most users until they’re published on Google Maps. In the past we would process edits in large groups, which meant it could take weeks before approved edits appeared on Google Maps. In preparation for yesterday’s launch, we recently added a new publishing system to reflect Map Maker user contributions on Google Maps more quickly. Once a Map Maker edit has been approved, it will now appear on Google Maps within minutes.
You often have the latest information about changes that occur in the places where you live and work. If a new coffee shop opens along your way to work, or you discover a tennis court nearby, you can add to or update the map and help other users find those spots just minutes after your edit is approved.
With our new publishing system and the efforts of the Map Maker community, we’re working together to make Google Maps a more detailed, up-to-date reflection of the world around us. You can see the results of these efforts through real-time edits by users around the world at mapmaker.google.com/pulse. To add your local knowledge, learn more or get started mapping at mapmaker.google.com.
Posted by Jamie Zyskowski, Software Engineer, Google Maps and Chandan Shanbhag, Software Engineer, Google Map Maker
