Reality Bites
Windows/Mac/Linux: Our favorite DVD-ripping, video-converting program Handbrake just updated today, bringing with it many annoyance fixes that speed up the process, like batch video scanning, queue editing, Blu-ray disc recognition, and drag-and-drop file additions in Windows. More »
Just because you’ve only got two speakers and a subwoofer doesn’t mean you should just place the speakers wherever there’s space. Audio firm Dolby offers an interactive app that shows the best speaker setups, angles, and distances for your living room. More »
Yeesh. What manner of ungodly sum is Facebook worth these days? $5 Billion, thanks to a new investment from the deep pockets at Goldman Sachs, who plunked down $500 million for the social networking site.
Remember how shocked everyone was when AOL bought Time Warner back in 2000–and not the other way around? Well, you might want to sit down for this–the new valuation puts Facebook’s valuation at more than Time Warner, Yahoo, and eBay.
A number of folks are speculating that such a valuation might end up convincing the company to go public with its stocks earlier than planned. At present, however, it doesn’t appear that Zuckerberg’s company has any plans to do so at least until 2012.
Ever get the urge to edit some audio but you’re not sure where to start? Settle in with this HTG guide to the free audio editor Audacity that’s written for beginners but caters to geeks of all levels.
Note: this is the first article in a multi-part series that we’ll be covering over the next few weeks
Many Hotmail users across the world reported over the weekend that their e-mails had been mysteriously deleted. Over the past couple of days, Microsoft’s official forums were filled with complaints from users claiming that their inboxes and all of their folders had been emptied, with some suspecting that their accounts had been hacked. Microsoft’s Hotmail technical team has acknowledged that it’s aware of the issue, and that it’s working to restore access for those affected. A Microsoft spokeswoman, however, told the BBC that the problem was not widespread. Check out DownloadSquad for more.
Continue reading Hotmail’s Mysterious Disappearing E-Mails Returning to Users’ Inboxes
Hotmail’s Mysterious Disappearing E-Mails Returning to Users’ Inboxes originally appeared on Switched on Mon, 03 Jan 2011 07:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
![Click here to read Google Considering a "Digital Newsstand" for Android](http://cache.gawkerassets.com/assets/images/17/2011/01/160x120_google_newsstand.jpg "Click here to read Google Considering a "Digital Newsstand" for Android")
Because the read-things-on-devices market isn’t crowded enough, the Wall Street Journal claims Google is looking into a “digital newsstand” to deliver major print media outlets onto Android-powered devices. A subscription-based news model would put Google in direct competition with similar efforts by Amazon and Apple, none of which have been overwhelmingly successful, but competition in the field and the likely lower resulting prices couldn’t hurt news outlets’ chances at gaining wider acceptance. Do you want your news delivered to your Android, app-style? [Wall Street Journal via CNET] More »
Can’t say we’re surprised — after all, last time we checked in the tally was hovering around 9.3 million — but now Samsung has officially met its goal of 10 million Galaxy S phones sold around the globe. That’s less than seven months since the device first hit the market, which by Sammy’s fuzzy math averages to about one unit for every two seconds it’s been on sale. According to Samsung Tomorrow, North America contributed the most with 4 million in sales, followed by Europe at 2.5 million. Let there be cake, and once that’s over, let there be progress on those Froyo updates.
Samsung reaches goal: 10 million Galaxy S phones sold worldwide originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 03 Jan 2011 05:14:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Let the Tegra 2-powered, Android Honeycomb tablet announcements begin! Apparently (and understandably) staying away from a Folio 2 moniker, Toshiba is kicking off CES with its new unnamed 10.1-inch Android tablet, and we have to say from our brief look at a non-working unit a few weeks ago, it may just have what it takes to stick out from the rest.. at least on the spec and manufacturing quality front. The tablet has a capacitive, high 1280 x 800-resolution display along with an accelerometer and ambient light sensor (or what Toshiba has dubbed as Adaptive Display technology). It also has a 5 megapixel rear camera as well as a 2 megapixel front-facing one. Yep, this one is well stocked and just a quick look at the pictures below will show that the slab has got full sized USB and HDMI jacks, a single mini-USB socket, and an SD card slot.
While we couldn’t turn on the dual-core Tegra 2-powered tablet, which will eventually run “the next version of Android designed for tablets” aka Honeycomb, we have to say the EasyGrip, spill-resistant, rubberized back felt really solid in hand and the 1.7-pound, .6-inch thick tablet felt comparable to the iPad in terms of portability. Oh, and did we mention that the aforementioned rear cover is swappable, so not only can you change its color but you can replace the battery? We told you it had some of the ingredients to make it go far, but we’re obviously lacking quite a bit of information here to make any further decisions. Toshiba’s maintaining that the tablet will be released in the first half of 2011 (it obviously has to wait until Honeycomb has been made official) and the pricing will be competitive, but we’ll be digging for more when we get to Vegas and hopefully reporting back with some impressions of a working unit.
Toshiba announces unnamed Tegra 2-powered Android tablet, waits only for Honeycomb originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 03 Jan 2011 03:15:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Many iPhone customers had some explaining to do after they overslept to start the new year, due to a glitch in the gadget’s alarm clock feature.
A 7.1-magnitude earthquake has struck central Chile, sending tens of thousands of people near coastal communities for higher ground over concerns it would generate a tsunami.
Some users of Microsoft Hotmail are starting off the new year scrambling to get back emails of old.
After more than a month of speculation, the Saskatchewan Roughriders may have found their newest head coach in Greg Marshall.
Pardon us if the headline is a little sensational, but this is one that we’ve personally experienced — and it’s not pretty. For at least the last couple versions, Android has been plagued with a couple extremely serious bugs in its text messaging subsystem that can ultimately end up causing you to text the wrong contact — even contacts that you’ve never texted before. There appear to be a few failure modes; the one we definitely experience on the Gingerbread-powered Nexus S involves being routed to the wrong thread when you tap it either in the Notifications list or the master thread list in the Messaging application, so if you don’t notice, you’ll end up firing a message to the wrong person.
More seriously, though, there’s also an open issue in Android’s bug tracking system — inexplicably marked “medium” priority — where sent text messages can appear to be in the correct thread and still end up being sent to another contact altogether. In other words, unless you pull up the Message Details screen after the fact, you might not even know the grievous act you’ve committed until your boss, significant other, or best friend — make that former best friend — texts you back. There seem to have been some attempts on Google’s part over the year to fix it; we can’t confirm that it still happens in 2.3, but for what it’s worth, the issue hasn’t been marked resolved in Google Code… and it was opened some six months ago.
This is akin to an alarm clock that occasionally won’t go off (we’ve been there) or a car that randomly won’t let you turn the steering wheel — you simply cannot have a phone that you can’t trust to communicate with the right people. It’s a deal-breaker. We’re pretty shocked that these issues weren’t tied up and blasted to all affected phones as an over-the-air patch months ago, but whatever the reason, we’d like to see Google, manufacturers, and carriers drop every other Android update they’re working on and make sure this is completely resolved immediately.
Want to see this fixed as much as we do? Scroll to the bottom of the Google Code page and hit “Vote for this issue and get email change notifications.”
Android still has horrible text messaging bugs that’ll get you fired, busted, or otherwise embarrassed originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 31 Dec 2010 13:12:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Canadian Google users have long been frustrated by having to wait for new online toys they can’t try but the company vows that’s going to change.
Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall promised to hold a province-wide referendum on the controversial topic at the same time as the next provincial election, scheduled for Nov. 7, 2011.
