Reality Bites
It’s been a very good year for Detroit’s crime-fighting cyborg. You’ve seen the RoboCop statue plans and heard Peter Weller address the robo-statue naysayers. Now it looks like the RoboCop remake from MGM is finally going forward. More »
Android/iOS: Somewhere between unwieldy chat rooms and focused-but-limited SMS must lie a way to tell a group—co-workers, friends, roommates—that you're stopping at India Gate, if anyone wants takeout. Beluga is that middle ground. You might also call it BlackBerry Messenger for the iOS/Android crowd. More »
It’s not rare to hear talk of other operating systems employing webOS-like elements — we’ve been asking to see its elegant notification system in iOS for years — but RIM’s BlackBerry Playbook borrows so heavily from the UI concepts of the software built by Palm and now owned by HP that it could easily be confused for a webOS tablet. It handles multiple concurrent applications using a card view and allows you to shut down unwanted apps by swiping them off the screen, a multitasking implementation that exhibits “uncanny similarities” in HP’s eyes to its own TouchPad tablet. Still, the Hewlett Packard team insist that they’re focused on their own products and will “keep innovating, we’ll keep honing and those guys hopefully will continue to see the value in it and keep following us by about a year.” Ouch.
RIM’s response, as espoused by Jeff McDowell, has been to say that “when you’re trying to optimize user experience that juggles multitasking, multiple apps open at once and on a small screen, you’re going to get people landing on similar kinds of designs.” This essentially sidesteps the issue by throwing a subtle compliment HP’s way, but it brings up an interesting question — shouldn’t companies aim to make the best software possible, in spite of it potentially looking like a ripoff of someone else’s work?
HP derides BlackBerry PlayBook OS as a ‘fast imitation’ of webOS, RIM says it’s just good UI design originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 01 Mar 2011 17:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Google’s notoriously generous at developer events, tossing out free devices like candy on Halloween, but here at the Game Developer Conference in San Francisco it’s letting them flow like wine. Each attendee at Google’s Web Developer Day yesterday got a free Cr-48 laptop, and today the company dished out even greater prizes — either a free Motorola Xoom tablet or a Nexus S smartphone to every soul listening to some exceedingly well-attended technical sessions on Android. That’s certainly one way to attract game developers to your platform.
Google gifts Xoom tablets to game devs at GDC 2011 originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 01 Mar 2011 16:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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With no federal money in hand for a proposed $400-million domed stadium for Regina, the deal is dead for now, the Saskatchewan government says.
Bell recently discounted the Samsung Galaxy Tab to #349.95 on a 3-year contract and today Rogers has come out with a better price. From March 1st until march 31st Rogers is offering the Tab for $299.99 on a 3-year (either the White or the Black version). Just remember if you are thinking about getting the […]
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A meteorite offers new clues into how essential biomolecules laid the foundation for life on Earth.
It’s the first of March, which in NVIDIA land means no longer just talking about Tegra Zone, but actually activating it and letting users see what all the fuss is about. For those who’ve not yet heard of it, the Tegra Zone is an Android application that curates and highlights content that would most benefit from having the dual-core power of that Tegra 2 chip within your device. At launch, that means a hand-picked selection of games whose makers have gone the extra mile and thrown in additional geometric detail, heavier computation loads, and higher-resolution textures specifically for Tegra 2 smartphones and tablets. The snazzier, more interactive games will still be sourced from the Android Market, the Tegra Zone is no more than a portal unto the vast world of Android content, but it’s hoped that its presence will help convey the full value of owning a dual-core mobile device. Even if that value will go down considerably when NVIDIA introduces its quad-core SOC in August — but, one super chip at a time!
Continue reading NVIDIA Tegra Zone officially launched, takes Android to new dual-core heights
NVIDIA Tegra Zone officially launched, takes Android to new dual-core heights originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 01 Mar 2011 09:42:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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As a loyal iPod user, you’d have thought that Queen Elizabeth II would have seen fit to bestow an honorary knighthood on a certain Steven Paul Jobs by now. After all, Sir Bill received his back in 2005 even though his company couldn’t quite get its cellphone or tablet strategies to stick with consumers. According to an anonymous senior Labour MP who left Parliament in the last election, Jobs had reached the final stages of approval for “services to technology” only to be rejected in 2009 by the then-Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Why? Well, according to The Telegraph, Jobs had the audacity to turn down an offer to speak at Labour’s annual conference. In retaliation we hear that Apple is holding Jony Ive — himself, an honorary Commander of the British Empire — hostage in an infinitely looping orange grove somewhere in northern California.
[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
Steve Jobs’ knighthood rejected by Gordon Brown? originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 01 Mar 2011 08:16:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
It’s not available on actual phones yet, but a core code change in Android 2.3.3 allows for apps to take screenshots, without “rooting” or setting up a development kit. Yes, iPhone users have been able to do this for some time, and, yes, it should have been available earlier. But, hey, it’s a major pain that’s going away. [Android Central] More »
We all know that light can’t exactly pass through solid objects — unless of course, you’re using a laser or something. Yes, X-rays allow us to look into suitcases at the airport and broken bones in our bodies, but there’s a new kid on the block that claims to have done the impossible in a novel fashion. Jochen Aulbach and his colleagues of the FOM Institute for Atomic and Molecular Physics out in Amsterdam have developed a technology that allows scrambled light to remain focused as it passes through ultra-thin layers of paint. You see, when light is sent through opaque material, it becomes muddled and lost in the space-time continuum. Aulbach and his crew used a spatial light modulator, or SMT, to control a 64-femtosecond long laser pulse that’s passed through a thin layer of paint. The SMT emits pulses that last long enough for only a machine to see and the data is sent to a computer for calibration. NewScientist claims that with this technology, it might be possible to hone in on cancerous cells and blast them to oblivion without damaging the healthy tissue surrounding them.
Scientists figure out how to see through walls, sort of originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 01 Mar 2011 07:32:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
The IE9 Release Candidate came out on February 10th, so you might think it’s about time it stepped its game up to a final release and Microsoft seems to be of the same mind. Download Squad reports insider sources have pinpointed the South by Southwest gathering in Austin, Texas, this month as the launch platform for the non-beta, non-RC Internet Explorer 9, with a direct download becoming available around 9PM ET on March 14th. That’s highly specific, though still unconfirmed, information. For some more official word on the matter, we have to go to the Indian branch of the Microsoft Developer Network, which has tweeted out the announcement that IE9 will launch on March 24th at Tech.Ed India 2011. We imagine that’s a launch party specific to India itself, however it does provide an official date for the latest time we can expect Microsoft to take the training wheels off its newest, shiniest browser.
Internet Explorer 9 expected on March 14th, definitely released by March 24th originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 01 Mar 2011 04:55:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Microsoft to demo Windows 8 tablet interface in June? originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 28 Feb 2011 22:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
I should first explain the radio silence of the last couple of weeks. We'd wanted to respond to feedback not with promises of future improvements but with actual fixes. So that's what I'm doing now—but I regret any impression that we weren't listening. Without more verbiage, the main changes you wanted: More »
UGGGHH why is your stupid computer being so stupid all the time! Honestly, it’s time to come to grips with the fact that it’s probably something you did. We’re doing the Kübler-Ross fast-track here, kids. [SMBC via The High Definite]
Samsung’s 8.9-inch Galaxy Tab likely to launch at CTIA originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 28 Feb 2011 18:10:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Grocery stores, as we’ve mentioned, put the least fresh food on the front of the shelves, so it gets bought first. On the bread shelves, though, they make it even easier to decode freshness: just check the color on its tag. More »
At this point, MSI has been showing off its 10-inch Android tablet for a good half a year, but at least this time it’s coming clean with some specs, and they’re actually not half bad. Yep, the company brought its WindPad 100A to CeBIT and has announced that it, like most of the others, is powered by a dual-core Tegra 2 processor and will get some sweet Honeycomb when it hits the market in late May or early June. The model on hand at CeBIT was running some 2.X version of Android, and the hardware was identical to the one we saw back at CES. MSI’s told us that pricing hasn’t been set yet, but hopefully, like Moto’s Sanjay Jha just proclaimed, these tablet prices will be dropping come the second half of the year. Hit the gallery below for some closer hands-on shots.
Gallery: MSI WindPad 100A at CeBIT 2011
Tablet shocker! MSI WindPad 100A packs Tegra 2 and will ship with Honeycomb originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 28 Feb 2011 16:43:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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