Reality Bites
RIM’s upcoming 2011 device lineup was leaked a couple months ago and some of the devices have started to pop up online. Today thanks to BGR for showing the upcoming BlackBerry Touch (Monaco). This is the said to be the next evolution of the Storm series… it packs a 3.7-inch touchscreen with a resolution of […]
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Man, remember when transferring data to your printer required a big fat cable and physical proximity to your ink spitter? Thankfully, we live in more refined times now and HP and Google have hooked up to deliver the first printers with driverless Cloud Print support, making the whole thing that extra bit easier. HP ePrint printers were already sophisticated enough to receive instructions via email and now they’re casting aside the need for a connected PC to talk to Google’s Cloud Print service as well. All you need is your machine’s @hpeprint.com email address and then you’re away, zipping pictures and text from your smartphone, tablet or laptop to the HP paper decorator. It’s all seamless and wireless and probably feels like the future when you’re doing it. We’d tell you, but we stopped printing stuff in 2004.
Continue reading HP enables Google Cloud Print on ePrint printers right out of the box
HP enables Google Cloud Print on ePrint printers right out of the box originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 31 Mar 2011 13:25:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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iPhones! iPads! Android! And yes, Windows Phone 7! We’ve updated all of our essential apps lists to include a few forgotten favorites, some long awaited arrivals and, as always, even more amazing apps. Be sure to check out the iPad and Windows Phone 7 lists! More »
Check out the stark difference between these two satellite images, taken on March 19, 2010 and March 19, 2011. The left image shows much more ozone (in red) over the Arctic than the right image. What’s happened? More »
A preview build of Windows 8 has gone out to select Microsoft partners, with bits of the “Twin UI” and other updates. Those builds are under seemingly heavy lock and key, but at least one thing has fallen onto the net: the default wallpaper. What should Microsoft try to accomplish in the (seemingly very 7-like) Windows 8? [ZDNet, Download Squad] More »
This gorgeous commercial — conceived by Morihiro Harano, the award-winning creative director of Drill, Inc. — features a sort of sloping marimba, down which a wooden ball rolls, producing an unadorned rendition of Bach’s Cantata 147. “We did not add any artificial music at all,” Harano tells the New York Times. The things people do to sell a wood-encased phone! Are we philistines for kinda digging Kristen Schaal’s Xperia PLAY spots more? (Answer: yes.)
Woodland Contraption Plays Bach, Peddles Phone originally appeared on Switched on Thu, 31 Mar 2011 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Imagine printing an important email from your Chrome notebook on your train ride to work, then finding the completed printout in the printer tray when you reach the office. Or printing your airline boarding pass from your smartphone to your home printer, so you can grab the printout on your way out the door. Today, we are one big step closer to this vision.
Last year, we launched Google Cloud Print, a service that enables users to print from any device, operating system, or browser to any printer without the need for drivers or a PC connection. The service can be used with any printer, but the most seamless experience is offered by Google Cloud Print Ready devices, a new generation of web-connected printers that don’t need to be attached to a computer. Today, HP has announced that all of its ePrint-enabled printers are Google Cloud Print Ready, in most cases right out of the box. With a Google Cloud Print Ready printer, you can print emails, documents and web pages from supported apps without having to hunt for drivers or printer cables.
You can already use Google Cloud Print on Chrome notebooks and in the mobile versions of Gmail and Google Docs. Many more supported apps are on the way. There are also a third-party Android app, Chrome extension and Firefox add-on to help you use Google Cloud Print in more places.
We’re also continuing to release enhancements to the Google Cloud Print service. We’ve released a Mac version of the Google Cloud Print connector for non-cloud printers in the Chrome beta channel. And over the next few days we’ll be enabling printer sharing for current Google Cloud Print users, so your family, friends and colleagues can print their documents from anywhere to anywhere.
Happy printing!
Posted by Abhijit Kalamkar, Software Engineer
Android tablets, everyone‘s got one, but none are quite like HTC’s 7-inch Flyer. Built out of a single piece of aluminum and a great many chunks of silicon, it struts along at a 1.5GHz pace, carries a handy dandy capacitive stylus called Scribe, and offers up a tablet-ified version of HTC’s Sense skin on a 1024 x 600 display. It’s also the only portable of its kind (so far) to offer the OnLive cloud gaming service. So many features, you’d think someone would go to the effort of summarizing them, perhaps in the form of a stylish video, no? Well, HTC has done exactly that, and its latest product overview vid is embedded for you just after the break.
Continue reading HTC Flyer parades its many unique qualities in latest video from the company
HTC Flyer parades its many unique qualities in latest video from the company originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 31 Mar 2011 09:05:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
World Backup Day isn't an official holiday, but it is a day of remembrance—as in, if you don't back up your important data, you will be remembering one day how stupid you were for not doing so. Here are the deals offered today, along with our recommendations on how and where to back up your important stuff. More »
India’s new national census puts the population at about 1.21 billion people, or 17 per cent of the world population, the census commissioner says.
It’s no secret that Netflix has grand plans to expand its global footprint that now feeds media to some 20 million North American subscribers. Hell, the company was boasting of the “significant dollars” allocated to its 2011 international expansion plans just four months ago. While nothing’s official yet, we’ve unearthed a few tantalizing openings posted to the Netflix job site over the last few days that could point to an imminent launch. Notably, Netflix’s customer service call center in Hillsboro Oregon is gearing up to expand its scope of operations beyond North America. Two new job postings for a Training Supervisor and Quality Assurance Analyst both mention the need to prepare for “rapid” international expansion and “will support a specific country / region outside of North America.” The Training Supervisor is being hired specifically to educate customer service reps in preparation for that future international growth. Neflix is looking for fluency in English in addition to Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese (Brazilian and European), and Spanish (Latin American and European), leaving things pretty wide open with regard to the countries targeted for initial launch.
We do know that Netflix had plans to launch in the UK way back in 2004 — plans that were ultimately scrapped in order to focus on its core US business (and later Canada). But if not the UK then we should at least expect to see Netflix target the European continent first if a statement attributed to CEO Reed Hastings from way back in January of 2010 still rings true: “the big market for Hollywood content (after the U.S.) is Europe…Third is Asia. Fourth is the rest of the world.” Can’t let Amazon have the market to itself now can we Reed?
[Thanks, Chico]
Netflix beefing up service center in preparation for global launch originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 31 Mar 2011 02:57:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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They said they would do it, and by golly it’s nearly here — Samsung just revealed that its assembly lines are starting to churn out see-thru computer screens that don’t require power-sucking backlights to function. Unfortunately, it looks like the amazing AMOLED variety is still on the drawing board, but ambient light-powered LCDs are on the way, with Samsung offering a 22-inch, 1680 x 1050 resolution panel with a 500:1 contrast ratio to begin with. Sammy suggests we’ll see it in HDMI and USB-compatible monitors and suspects it’ll be used in advertising and teleconferencing first — which suggests this display won’t come cheap — but we all know the true killer app will be a nice big frameless laptop screen. We’ll take two, please. PR after the break.
Samsung mass-producing 22-inch transparent LCD, your desktop monitor seethes with jealousy originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 31 Mar 2011 00:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
By the looks of the screenshot sent in by tipster Greg E., the fine people of Chicago, Rockford and beyond have roughly 36 hours to prepare for what weatherman Mike Caplan says is coming their way. More »
With the great NFC race looming, Google is axing support for QR Codes in their Places service. QR codes made a noble play for the hearts and minds of nerds, but honestly, I hope this is the first step towards their complete and utter annihilation. More »
Researchers show off ‘flex’ interface for touchscreens originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 30 Mar 2011 18:09:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
As you’ll recall from yesterday, there was one small detail that stood out in Microsoft’s announcement of a new preview program for the Xbox 360 — namely, word that the latest system update would bring with it an “updated Xbox 360 disc format.” That naturally prompted plenty of speculation, and Eurogamer now says it has heard from a “highly placed development source” who has confirmed that the new disc format actually adds 1GB of storage space to Xbox 360 discs. As the site notes, the Xbox 360’s current disc format tops out at just 6.8GB, which still leaves some room to play around with on a standard dual-layer DVD. That would also explain the free copy of Halo: Reach that Microsoft is giving out to everyone accepted into the preview program — can’t really test a new disc format without some new discs now, can you?
Microsoft’s ‘updated Xbox 360 disc format’ to add an extra gigabyte? originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 30 Mar 2011 17:23:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Do you hate the idea of all the lovely spring weather coming just around the bend? Then don Magic Vision Lab’s augmented reality weather-changing helmet. All your bucolic spring days can now be filled with sleet and misery. More »
By Duncan Geere, Wired UK
The unprecedented flooding in Pakistan in the latter half of 2010 disrupted the lives of 20 million people, but it also affected the country’s arachnid population.
With more than a fifth of the country submerged, millions of spiders climbed into trees to escape the rising floodwaters. The water took so long to recede, the trees became covered in a cocoon of spiderwebs. The result is an eerie, alien panorama, with any vegetation covered in a thick mass of webbing. (You can see images from the region in the gallery linked below.)
However, the unusual phenomenon may be a blessing in disguise. Britain’s department for international development reports that areas where the spiders have scaled the trees have seen far fewer malaria-spreading mosquitos than might be expected, given the prevalence of stagnant, standing water.
The agency is providing aid to the communities affected by the disaster, including safe drinking water, health care, food and shelter. To reduce the population’s long-term dependence on that aid, the government agency is now offering wheat seeds and tools to farmers, and jobs and skills training for those in rural areas. However, reconstruction in the worst-hit areas is expected to take many years.
See more images with the original story on Wired UK.
Image: U.K. Department for International Development
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TEPCO says they’re going to permanently shut down the four nuclear reactors at the Fukushima power plant which caused catastrophic problems for the entire Japanese nation after the earthquake that hit on March 11. More »
