Planet DiUS

Researchers hack Kinect for glasses-free 3D teleconferencing (video)

2011-06-02T23:46:00+00:00

Since the dawn of Kinect hacking, we've seen cameras strung together (or rotated) to create 3D, video game-like environments, while others have tweaked it for headtracking. Others, still, have used it for teleconferencing (albeit, the flat, two-dimensional variety). Now, a team of researchers have gone and thrown it all together to achieve 3D video chats, and if we do say so, the result is greater than a sum of its parts. The group, based out of UNC-Chapel Hill, uses 3D mapping (and at least four Kinects) to render the video, and then employs headtracking on the receiving end so that people tuning in will actually see the live video in 3D, even without wearing 3D glasses. The result: a tableau that follows you as you move your head and spin around restlessly in your desk chair waiting for the meeting to end. That's mighty impressive, but we can't help but wonder: do you really want to see your colleagues in such lifelike detail? Have a gander at the video and decide for yourself.

Researchers hack Kinect for glasses-free 3D teleconferencing (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 02 Jun 2011 19:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Leaving DiUS

2011-05-30T11:57:06+00:00

Today was my last day at DiUS Computing, where I have been working for the last six years. I was the first full-time DiUS employee, coming on board with owner Joe after working together at Object Consulting. My first gig was to prototype an application using this new (pre 1.0) Ruby on Rails thing. My time at DiUS has been split across working on development projects, both internal and for customers, and helping out growing a new company to the 80+ (mostly technology) people that work there now.

My relationship with DiUS and the people who work there goes beyond the typical employee link, so it has been a very difficult decision to explore new opportunities. Of course the business will continue to go great guns without me, and I'd recommend it to any smart people who like working with great people and technology. And Melbourne's IT community being as it is, it won't be long before our paths cross again.

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pjax

2011-05-29T23:31:13+00:00

Shared by Peter Moran
How Github pages are done.

pjax loads html from your server into the current page without a full page load. It's ajax with real permalinks, page titles, and a working back button that fully degrades.How Github pages are done.

Paid apps find success much easier on Apple's iPhone than Google Android

2011-05-27T18:20:00+00:00

A new analysis of mobile applications has found that while paid software in the iPhone App Store routinely finds success, selling software on the Android platform is a much more difficult proposition.

Announcing our license recommendations guide

2011-05-25T19:17:19+00:00

Today I'm happy to share something we've been working on for a little while: “How to choose a license for your own work” is a comprehensive set of license recommendations for new projects. This page explains what factors are important to consider when making licensing decisions, and suggests specific licenses for different scenarios. If you're starting a new project (whether it's software, documentation, or something else related) and unsure what license to use, you just need this one link to find our recommendations.

We've been making most of these recommendations for a while, but that information has been scattered across different web pages, interviews, and sometimes even private emails. This page brings all of that together in a single reference.

Consolidation was my initial motivation for this project, but the drafting process gave us a natural opportunity to reevaluate our recommendations from a policy perspective, and we took advantage of that. Ultimately, we made one change worth highlighting: we now recommend the Apache License 2.0 in situations where a copyleft license isn't appropriate, where we used to recommend simpler alternatives like the Expat license.

This shift was spurred on by several changes that have taken place over the past few years. As sad as I am to admit it, patents remain a growing threat to free software. The US Supreme Court's decision in Bilski v. Kappos missed a crucial opportunity to stem the tide of software patents, and the cases that have followed since have only served to drive that point home. Every time another bad ruling comes down—Bedrock v. Google is only the most recent example—it becomes that much more important for the free software community to do everything it can to defend itself from software patents. We will never be completely safe until software patents are abolished, but any defenses we can implement today are worthwhile.

The Apache License 2.0 is the best non-copyleft license that does what a copyright license can to mitigate threats from software patents. It's a well-established, mature license that users, developers, and distributors alike are all comfortable with. You can tell it's important by the way that other free software licenses work to cooperate with it: the drafting processes for GPLv3 and the Mozilla Public License 2.0 named compatibility with the Apache License 2.0 as a goal from day one. The Apache Software Foundation deserves a lot of credit for pushing to do more to tackle software patents in a license, and implementing an effective strategy in the Apache License.

It's unfortunate that the Apache License 2.0 isn't compatible with some free software licenses like GPLv2. As we considered this change to our recommendations, this point was easily the most important one weighing against it. Fortunately, every major copyleft license has or will soon have Apache compatibility in their latest versions, which mitigates those concerns. Ultimately, we went ahead with this change because we want our recommendations to help projects make decisions that will serve them well for a long time to come, rather than focusing too much on today's immediate circumstances.

I hope that this new page helps everyone better understand the important issues that impact a licensing decision, and that this blog post helps everyone understand why we've started recommending the Apache License 2.0 in some circumstances. If you have questions or feedback about any of this, we'll be happy to hear from you; please don't hesitate to write us at licensing@fsf.org.

Apple's iOS App Store reaches a half-million approved apps - report

2011-05-24T13:05:00+00:00

This week, Apple is believed to have crossed a major milestone, having approved more than 500,000 applications for the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.

The tech boom is back, strap yourself in

2011-05-24T07:39:24+00:00

"you can hire freelancers to put it together for you, on the cheap"

Disgruntled Bomb: Java Edition

2011-05-23T13:00:00+00:00

A little while back, we had a Bring Your own Code called The Disgruntled Bomb that sought to answer, "what is the worst thing a disgruntled employee could leave behind in the source code?"

The comments were great and featured all sorts of solutions. Most were in C and C++, but there were few unique ones like a cronjob and even an incredible one-liner for .NET.

While C and C++ give programmers enough rope to shoot themselves (or build a crazy bomb), managed platforms like .NET and Java limit your options. That is, unless you know where to look. Alexander Keul took advantage of Java's cached boxing conversions to come up with this concept:

package dont.try_this.at_home;
import java.lang.*;

class ValueMunger extends Thread {
    public void run() {
        while(true) {
            munge();
            try { sleep(1000); } catch (Throwable t) { }
        }
    }
    
    public void munge() {
        try {
            Field field = Integer.class.getDeclaredField( "value" );
            field.setAccessible( true );
            for(int i = -127; i<=128; i++)
            field.setInt( 
                Integer.valueOf(i),
                // either the same (90%), +1 (10%), or 42 (1%)
                Math.random() < 0.9 ? i : Math.random() < 0.1 ? 42 : i+1  );
        } catch (Throwable t) { ; }
    }

}

A simple call to (new ValueMunger()).start(); will spin off a new thread that will randomly redefines the values of integers between -127 and 128, ensuring that maths will never be the same again:

Integer a = 2;
Integer b = 3;

System.out.println( a + b ); // could be 5, 6, 7, 44, 45, or 84

To extend the fun, this works for Boolean and several other primative types like BigInteger, Long, Short, etc.

The Infinite Version

2011-05-23T11:36:57+00:00

One of the things I like most about Google's Chrome web browser is how often it is updated. But now that Chrome has rocketed through eleven versions in two and a half years, the thrill of seeing that version number increment has largely worn off. It seems they've picked off all the low hanging fruit at this point and are mostly polishing. The highlights from Version 11, the current release of Chrome?

HTML5 Speech Input API. Updated icon.

Exciting, eh? Though there was no shortage of hand-wringing over the new icon, of course.

Chrome's version number has been changing so rapidly lately that every time someone opens a Chrome bug on a Stack Exchange site, I have to check my version against theirs just to make sure we're still talking about the same software. And once -- I swear I am not making this up -- the version incremented while I was checking the version.

That was the day I officially stopped caring what version Chrome is. I mean, I care in the sense that sometimes I need to check its dogtags in battle, but as a regular user of Chrome, I no longer think of myself as using a specific version of Chrome, I just … use Chrome. Whatever the latest version is, I have it automagically.

For the longest time, web browsers have been strongly associated with specific versions. The very mention of Internet Explorer 6 or Netscape 4.77 should send a shiver down the spine of any self-respecting geek. And for good reason! Who can forget what a breakout hit Firefox 3 was, or the epochs that Internet Explorer 7, 8 and 9 represent in Microsoft history. But Chrome? Chrome is so fluid that it has transcended software versioning altogether.

This fluidity is difficult to achieve for client software that runs on millions of PCs, Macs, and other devices. Google put an extreme amount of engineering effort into making the Chrome auto-update process "just work". They've optimized the heck out of the update process.

Rather then push put a whole new 10MB update [for each version], we send out a diff that takes the previous version of Google Chrome and generates the new version. We tried several binary diff algorithms and have been using bsdiff up until now. We are big fans of bsdiff - it is small and worked better than anything else we tried.
But bsdiff was still producing diffs that were bigger than we felt were necessary. So we wrote a new diff algorithm that knows more about the kind of data we are pushing - large files containing compiled executables. Here are the sizes for the recent 190.1 -> 190.4 update on the developer channel:

Full update: 10 megabytes
bsdiff update: 704 kilobytes
Courgette update: 78 kilobytes

The small size in combination with Google Chrome's silent update means we can update as often as necessary to keep users safe.

Google's Courgette -- the French word for Zucchini, oddly enough -- is an amazing bit of software optimization, capable of producing uncannily small diffs of binary executables. To achieve this, it has to know intimate details about the source code:

The problem with compiled applications is that even a small source code change causes a disproportional number of byte level changes. When you add a few lines of code, for example, a range check to prevent a buffer overrun, all the subsequent code gets moved to make room for the new instructions. The compiled code is full of internal references where some instruction or datum contains the address (or offset) of another instruction or datum. It only takes a few source changes before almost all of these internal pointers have a different value, and there are a lot of them - roughly half a million in a program the size of chrome.dll.
The source code does not have this problem because all the entities in the source are symbolic. Functions don't get committed to a specific address until very late in the compilation process, during assembly or linking. If we could step backwards a little and make the internal pointers symbolic again, could we get smaller updates?

Since the version updates are relatively small, they can be downloaded in the background. But even Google hasn't figured out how to install an update while the browser is running. Yes, there are little alert icons to let you know your browser is out of date, and you eventually do get nagged if you are woefully behind, but updating always requires the browser to restart.

Web applications have it far easier, but they have version delivery problems, too. Consider WordPress, one of the largest and most popular webapps on the planet. We run WordPress on multiple blogs and even have our own WordPress community. WordPress doesn't auto-update to each new version, but it makes it as painless as I've seen for a webapp. Click the update link on the dashboard and WordPress (and its add-ons) update to the latest version all by themselves. There might be the briefest of interruptions in service for visitors to your WordPress site, but then you're back in business with the latest update.

WordPress needs everyone to update to the latest versions regularly for the same reasons Google Chrome does -- security, performance, and stability. An internet full of old, unpatched WordPress or Chrome installations is no less dangerous than an internet full of old, unpatched Windows XP machines.

These are both relatively seamless update processes. But they're nowhere near as seamless as they should be. One click updates that require notification and restart aren't good enough. To achieve the infinite version, we software engineers have to go a lot deeper.

Somehow, we have to be able to automatically update software while it is running without interrupting the user at all. Not if -- but when -- the infinite version arrives, our users probably won't even know. Or care. And that's how we'll know we've achieved our goal.

Paralyzed man can stand and walk again, thanks to spinal implant

2011-05-20T12:47:00+00:00

Here's an amazing story to end your week on a high note: a 25-year-old paraplegic is now walking again, thanks to a groundbreaking procedure developed by neuroscientists at the University of Louisville, UCLA and Cal Tech. The Oregon man, Rob Summers, was paralyzed below the chest in 2006, after getting hit by a speeding car. This week, however, doctors announced that Summers can now stand up on his own and remain standing for up to four minutes. With the help of a special harness, he can even take steps on a treadmill and can move his lower extremities for the first time in years. It was all made possible by a spinal implant that emits small pulses of electricity, designed to replicate signals that the brain usually sends to coordinate movement. Prior to receiving the implant in 2009, Summers underwent two years of training on a treadmill, with a harness supporting his weight and researchers moving his legs. This week's breakthrough comes after 30 years of research, though scientists acknowledge that this brand of epidural stimulation still needs to be tested on a broader sample of subjects before any definitive conclusions can be drawn. Summers, meanwhile, seems understandably elated. "This procedure has completely changed my life," the former baseball player said. "To be able to pick up my foot and step down again was unbelievable, but beyond all of that my sense of well-being has changed." We can only imagine.

Paralyzed man can stand and walk again, thanks to spinal implant originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 20 May 2011 08:47:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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HP Unveils Non-Computer For Those Who Don't Need A Computer | The Onion - America's Finest News Source

2011-05-20T05:57:55+00:00

PALO ALTO, CA—Hewlett-Packard announced Friday the release of the first-ever non-computer, a fully unusable device spe≠cially designed to address the demands of individuals who have absolutely no need to own a computer. CEO Léo Apotheker t...

Kindle books officially take over print sales at Amazon, pulp starts making retirement plans

2011-05-19T14:01:00+00:00

The Kindle has been a huge success, no doubt about that, but we are continually amazed at just how big a success it has become. Amazon too, apparently. The company just issued a press release to announce that digital book sales have now exceeded sales of all print titles, both hardcover and paperback combined. As of April 1st, for every 100 print books that Amazon has sold (of any kind) the company moved 105 Kindle books, and no that doesn't include downloads of free titles. Also of note: the ad-supported reader that's shipping for $114 is now selling more quickly than the normal, $139 version. Proof, then, that people will put up with more ads in more places for 25 bucks.

Continue reading Kindle books officially take over print sales at Amazon, pulp starts making retirement plans

Kindle books officially take over print sales at Amazon, pulp starts making retirement plans originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 19 May 2011 10:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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BBC shows us what it's like to live with a bionic hand

2011-05-19T12:01:00+00:00

We've posted a fair share on bionic limbs and their advancements over the years, but rarely have we had the chance to see a video of one in real world use, on a real person. The BBC has shared a video of a man named Patrick using his bionic arm, which -- long story short -- was partially the result of being electrocuted at work. This is his second one to date and specifically, it's a prototype Otto Bock mind-controlled prosthetic arm equipped with six nerve sensors that let him use the hand as if it were his own-- it supports pinching and gripping with the fingers as well as lateral and circular movement of the wrist. Although the footage is a mundane roll of various day to day tasks -- gripping a bottle to pour a glass of water for instance -- it's quite amazing to realize technology is helping him do things he'd otherwise be deprived of. We'd suggest checking it out at the BBC by clicking the source link below.

BBC shows us what it's like to live with a bionic hand originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 19 May 2011 08:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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French basketball team 'trains' with robots, learns how to 'win'

2011-05-16T19:02:00+00:00

To the list of French accomplishments you may now add "robot basketball training" -- at least if the video above is to be believed. But you probably shouldn't believe it when members of Poitiers Basket 86 testify that amusement park rides improved the team's "spatial orientation" and helped them defeat top-ranked Chalon. It'd be different if the "robots" were teaching them perfect free-throw or helping them walk, obviously, but PB86 is known for its innovative advertising, and this seems like a quirky example. Hit the video above to see the pranksters at work, but know that, as with Sartre and Camus, something gets lost in translation.

[Thanks, Antoine]

French basketball team 'trains' with robots, learns how to 'win' originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 16 May 2011 15:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Confirmed: Next-gen Porsche 911 to use KERS throughout entire model range

2011-05-16T13:59:00+00:00

Filed under: Coupe, Performance, Europe, Porsche, Rumormill

991 Porsche 911 spy shots - Click above for high-res image gallery

The next generation Porsche 911 will be a significant departure from all previous generations, though to the untrained eye that could be a hot-air boast. The chief novelty of the 991, confirmed for us recently by Porsche sources in Germany, is that the entire range will benefit from a KERS device, such as what was used by a couple of teams in Formula 1 in 2009 and then immediately banned by the FIA for the 2010 season as an unfair advantage, only to be allowed again for this 2011 season.

The Kinetic Energy Recovery System takes brake energy recuperation to a whole new sophisticated level, putting it on reserve for when you want the pedal on the metal for quick overtaking. But it's not stored in any additional onboard battery system - instead, it is meted out via a dedicated special flywheel system.

The chief giveaway that Porsche is definitely planning the KERS strategy is the added wheelbase length of four whole inches together with added vehicle length of 2.75 inches. Just the right amount of distance for incorporating the new flywheel technology between the gearbox and engine.

Though the starter 991 911 Carrera is earmarked to have 350 horsepower from a smaller 3.4-liter flat-six engine, the KERS ingredient will give the car acceleration figures comfortably quicker than the 4.7-second 0-to-60 time of the current 997 911 Carrera. And this direction ensures that the new 911 can still emit less noxious stuff, go faster, go farther on a gallon, and, according to our sources, even weigh around 100 pounds less as Porsche rolls out more and more lightweight materials usage where we've never seen it before.

Next-gen Porsche 911 to use KERS throughout entire model range originally appeared on Autoblog on Mon, 16 May 2011 08:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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NVIDIA CEO disappointed by Android tablet sales, blames pricing and poor app selection

2011-05-16T00:05:00+00:00

It won't have escaped your attention that just about every Honeycomb tablet shipping in the first half of this year features, or will feature, NVIDIA's Tegra 2 hardware. Unfortunately for NVIDIA, reception for the Android 3.0 slates has been a little underwhelming, and the company's Chief Eloquence Officer, Jen-Hsun Huang, has had a few words to say about it. He sees the relative paucity of tablet-optimized Android apps as a weakness, while also expressing the belief that cheaper WiFi-only models should've been the standard shipping config rather than fully fledged 3G / 4G variants as Motorola has been pushing with the Xoom. All in all, his is a very sane and accurate analysis, but Mr. Huang loves to look to the future as much as he enjoys talking about the present, and in his opinion all these major downsides have already been "largely addressed" by "a new wave" of Android tablets. He doesn't specify the devices that constitute said wave, but his emphasis on thinness and lightness leads us to believe he's talking up Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1 and 8.9 models. Hit the source links to read more from the bronzed stallion in charge of NVIDIA.

NVIDIA CEO disappointed by Android tablet sales, blames pricing and poor app selection originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 15 May 2011 20:05:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | CNET, ZDNet | Email this | Comments

NaClBox brings DOS-based gaming to Chrome along with sweet, sweet nostalgia

2011-05-12T22:46:00+00:00

Now that Angry Birds has come to Chrome, none of us have any reason to leave the house. But if you like your games closer to 1fps, NaClBox may be more your speed. The Chrome-only emulator revives such DOS-based classics as The Secret of Monkey Island , Falcon 3.0, and Alone In the Dark. Most are demos, meant to show off the browser's Native Client potential and tug the heartstrings of retro-gamers. And we'll admit getting a little misty at stepping back into the blocky shoes of Guybrush Threepwood -- but maybe even more so at the bleepy-bloopy Soundblaster-era soundrack.

NaClBox brings DOS-based gaming to Chrome along with sweet, sweet nostalgia originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 12 May 2011 18:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Zynga crowns Lady Gaga as FarmVille's newest cash cow

2011-05-12T14:13:00+00:00

What better way to market a game that isn't really a game than with an artist who isn't really an artist? Such was the rationale, apparently, behind Zynga's recent decision to partner with Lady Gaga, the freshly anointed face of FarmVille. As of May 17th, FarmVille users will be able to take a much-needed break from wasting their lives and visit GagaVille -- a neighboring but equally fake farm full of unicorns, crystals and terrible life decisions. There, visitors will be able to listen to unreleased tracks from Gaga's forthcoming album, Born This Way, which they can also download for "free," once they've dropped $25 of their parents' hard-earned cash on a Zynga gift card. The campaign will mercifully come to an end on May 26th, but not before Diet Madonna extends her corporate leviathan to every corner of Zynga's gaming universe, including Words With Friends, Mafia Wars and anything else your pre-teen cousin spends far too much time playing. Gaga will win. Zynga will win. The human race, on balance, will lose. If you haven't slit your wrists yet, the PR after the break should do the trick.

Continue reading Zynga crowns Lady Gaga as FarmVille's newest cash cow

Zynga crowns Lady Gaga as FarmVille's newest cash cow originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 12 May 2011 10:13:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple investigating advanced keyboards with proximity sensors, tactile feedback

2011-05-12T12:30:00+00:00

Apple has shown interest in creating an advanced keyboard that could provide tactile feedback to users through the inclusion of numerous proximity sensors and air vents on individual keys.

Heroku: How does Heroku work? - Quora

2011-05-12T04:05:10+00:00

/via http://news.ycombinator.com/

NPD: iPad cannibalization of PC market has slowed

2011-05-12T00:55:00+00:00

A new report from market research firm NPD claims that the iPad's cannibalization of the PC market has slowed, as new purchasers of the device are less likely to have forgone a PC purchase than were early adopters.

Audi introducing roadside assistant apps for iPhone, Android, Blackberry

2011-05-10T23:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Safety, Technology, Audi

Audi is rolling out a new roadside assistance app for owners equipped with an iPhone, Blackberry or Android device, and drivers with older Audis can get in on the action as well.

Once you've download the app from the corresponding store, you enter your VIN and some basic personal information, and get access to Audi's roadside assistance program supplied by Allstate. Jump-starts, fuel delivery and towing are included in the service - free for new owners and requiring a fee for older models. The app also includes a dealer locator and taps into your smartphone's GPS functionality to pinpoint your location.

The Curve and Bold are the first two Blackberrys supported by the app (download here), with the iPhone and Android versions available at the Apple App Store and Android Market, respectively. Full details in the press blast after the break.

Continue reading Audi introducing roadside assistant apps for iPhone, Android, Blackberry

Audi introducing roadside assistant apps for iPhone, Android, Blackberry originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 10 May 2011 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Inventor of THX sound system hired to run Apple audio - report

2011-05-04T19:55:00+00:00

Apple has reportedly hired Tomlinson Holman, inventor of the Lucasfilm THX high-fidelity audio system, to be its new audio chief.

Microsoft aims to woo developers to Windows Phone with iOS porting tool

2011-05-04T01:05:00+00:00

In a bid to attract developers from Apple's ecosystem, Microsoft has released an iOS to Windows Phone 7 API mapping tool meant to help developers port their iPhone apps to the Windows Phone platform.

Ford Focus adds on-board WiFi in Europe

2011-05-03T21:02:00+00:00

Filed under: Europe, Technology, Ford, UK

Ford SYNC Mobile WiFi Hotspot - Click above for high-res image gallery

You might figure that, with a name like Focus, Ford's compact model would be all about eliminating distractions. But the new global Focus is jam-packed with technology, and the latest among them is a new in-car WiFi system.

The device works with SYNC and MyFord Touch to pick up the signal from a mobile internet dongle or smartphone and share it with as many as five additional devices in the car. This should come in handy for road trips and traveling salesmen, but we hope drivers will be able to stayed focused while behind the wheel.

One way or another, the system appears to be available - at least initially - only overseas in European markets, but we'll be keeping an eye out for its introduction in the United Sates, as well. In the meantime you can follow the jump to scope out the full details in the press release from Ford's British subsidiary.

Gallery: Ford SYNC Mobile WiFi Hotspot

Continue reading Ford Focus adds on-board WiFi in Europe

Ford Focus adds on-board WiFi in Europe originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 03 May 2011 16:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Nielsen estimates show first drop in TV ownership in 20 years, Mayans nod approvingly

2011-05-03T18:52:00+00:00

The Nielsen Company has announced that its estimated number of TV households for 2012 is dropping to 114.7 million (96.7 percent), down from 115.9 million (98.9 percent) the year before which is the first time it's gone down in two decades. While some will say this marks the end of the TV era as we've known it, there are a couple of factors to take into account, starting with how the numbers are gathered -- Nielsen only counts TVs that are capable of tuning into at least one channel. If you've cut the cord and gone all internet / Blu-ray / DVD without putting up an antenna or never upgraded for digital broadcasts (as some rural or low-income homes have not) then your TV doesn't count. After reviewing the numbers and watching Apocalypto twice we still can't tell if this means it's already over for linear TV or if it's more of a temporary bump due to an uncertain economy like it was in 1992. Of course, the fact that we rented the movie on iTunes may be telling.

Nielsen estimates show first drop in TV ownership in 20 years, Mayans nod approvingly originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 03 May 2011 14:52:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Australia trialing new emergency finder system with centimeter accuracy

2011-05-03T13:27:00+00:00

This year has seen the evil doings of many powerful natural disasters around the world, and while the capable organisations are doing their best to provide relief, many lives could've been saved if the stranded victims were able to provide their precise positions for quicker rescue. Having seen the number of recent floods and cyclones in Queensland, Australia, Ergon Energy started trialing a new emergency tracking system earlier this year, which utilises pole-mounted mobile GPS stations to pinpoint cellphones equipped with special but cheap location-based chips -- Samsung and Nokia are said to be participants in this project. Over the next 12 to 18 months, said energy firm will be deploying 1,000 of these stations to cover 95 percent of the state, in order to let emergency services track down calling victims within centimeters -- that's a huge leap from conventional GPS devices' 10 to 20 meters, though an updated land database with matching accuracy is still required before the system reaches its full potential. Regardless, here's hoping that this brilliant project will be brought over to many more disaster-prone areas sooner rather than later.

[Thanks, Justin]

Australia trialing new emergency finder system with centimeter accuracy originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 03 May 2011 09:27:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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VMware CloudFoundry: Ruby powered PaaS - igvita.com

2011-05-03T04:36:14+00:00

you can now run a "mini Heroku", or an "EngineYard cloud" on your own servers! But marketing aside, the engineering behind the project is also very interesting: it is orchestrated entirely in Ruby! No Erlang, no JVM's, all Ruby under the hood.

The Hot/Crazy Solid State Drive Scale

2011-05-02T09:24:36+00:00

As an early advocate of solid state hard drives …

The State of Solid State Hard Drives (October 2009)
Revisiting Solid State Hard Drives (October 2010)

… I feel ethically and morally obligated to let you in on a dirty little secret I've discovered in the last two years of full time SSD ownership. Solid state hard drives fail. A lot. And not just any fail. I'm talking about catastrophic, oh-my-God-what-just-happened-to-all-my-data instant gigafail. It's not pretty.

I bought a set of three Crucial 128 GB SSDs in October 2009 for the original two members of the Stack Overflow team plus myself. As of last month, two out of three of those had failed. And just the other day I was chatting with Joel on the podcast (yep, it's back), and he casually mentioned to me that the Intel SSD in his Thinkpad, which was purchased roughly around the same time as ours, had also failed.

Portman Wills, friend of the company and generally awesome guy, has a far scarier tale to tell. He got infected with the SSD religion based on my original 2009 blog post, and he went all in. He purchased eight SSDs over the last two years … and all of them failed. The tale of the tape is frankly a little terrifying:

Super Talent 32 GB SSD, failed after 137 days
OCZ Vertex 1 250 GB SSD, failed after 512 days
G.Skill 64 GB SSD, failed after 251 days
G.Skill 64 GB SSD, failed after 276 days
Crucial 64 GB SSD, failed after 350 days
OCZ Agility 60 GB SSD, failed after 72 days
Intel X25-M 80 GB SSD, failed after 15 days
Intel X25-M 80 GB SSD, failed after 206 days

You might think after this I'd be swearing off SSDs as unstable, unreliable technology. Particularly since I am the world's foremost expert on backups.

Well, you'd be wrong. I just went out and bought myself a hot new OCZ Vertex 3 SSD, the clear winner of the latest generation of SSDs to arrive this year. Storage Review calls it the fastest SATA SSD we've seen.

Beta firmware or not though, the Vertex 3 is a scorcher. We'll get into the details later in the review, but our numbers show it as clearly the fastest SATA SSD to hit our bench.

While that shouldn't be entirely surprising, it's not just faster like, "Woo, it edged out the prior generation SF-1200 SSDs, yeah!" It's faster like, "Holy @&#% that's fast," boasting 69% faster results in some of our real-world tests.

Solid state hard drives are so freaking amazing performance wise, and the experience you will have with them is so transformative, that I don't even care if they fail every 12 months on average! I can't imagine using a computer without a SSD any more; it'd be like going back to dial-up internet or 13" CRTs or single button mice. Over my dead body, man!

It may seem irrational, but … well, I believe the phenomenon was explained best on the television show How I Met Your Mother by Barney Stinson, a character played brilliantly by geek favorite Neil Patrick Harris:

Barney: There's no way she's above the line on the 'hot/crazy' scale.
Ted: She's not even on the 'hot/crazy' scale; she's just hot.
Robin: Wait, 'hot/crazy' scale?
Barney: Let me illustrate!

Barney: A girl is allowed to be crazy as long as she is equally hot. Thus, if she's this crazy, she has to be this hot. You want the girl to be above this line. Also known as the 'Vickie Mendoza Diagonal'. This girl I dated. She played jump rope with that line. She'd shave her head, then lose 10 pounds. She'd stab me with a fork, then get a boob job. [pause] I should give her a call.

Thing is, SSDs are so scorching hot that I'm willing to put up with their craziness. Consider that just in the last two years, their performance has doubled. Doubled! And the latest, fastest SSDs can even saturate existing SATA interfaces; they need brand new 6 Gbps interfaces to fully strut their stuff. No CPU or memory upgrade can come close to touching that kind of real world performance increase.

Just make sure you have a good backup plan if you're running on a SSD. I do hope they iron out the reliability kinks in the next 2 generations … but I've spent the last two months checking out the hot/crazy solid state drive scale in excruciating detail, and trust me, you want one of these new Vertex 3 SSDs right now.

Duran Duran: The Man Who Stole a Leopard

2011-05-01T04:21:15+00:00

Here is a concept for The Man Who Stole a Leopard by Duran Duran.

I contacted their manager Wendy (wendy@magusentertainment.com) and sent it through, and even after inquiring a bit later I still have not heard anything. Not even a thank you for the submission.

What do you think of it?

DuranDuranVideoConcept

State Farm app uses iPhone sensors to grade your driving habits, oh joy

2011-04-30T22:07:00+00:00

Remember when you took your driving test and and had an inspector second-guessing your every stop, turn, signal and lane choice? State Farm's new Driver Feedback app is like having said individual with you all the time. Simply put, it uses your smartphone's accelerometer and GPS to gauge your acceleration, braking and cornering habits (sound familiar?) and spit out a score, letting you brag to your (parents / significant other / stranger / the family dog) just how safe and secure you are. State Farm claims it doesn't collect any information and won't adjust your insurance rates based on your score, which is a bit of a bummer if you ask us -- wouldn't it be nice if you could earn some cash back for perfecting your heel-toe? Either way, you'll find it for free in the iTunes App Store.

Continue reading State Farm app uses iPhone sensors to grade your driving habits, oh joy

State Farm app uses iPhone sensors to grade your driving habits, oh joy originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 30 Apr 2011 18:07:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Autoblog, CNET | State Farm | Email this | Comments

Google Docs gets an Android app, lets you capture text with your phone's camera

2011-04-27T17:01:00+00:00

Google's had a mobile-friendly version of Google Docs available for some time now, but it's now finally gone the extra step and released a dedicated Android app. That will of course let you access and edit your documents on your smartphone, but the real standout feature is the ability to capture text with your phone's camera and have it instantly made editable thanks to some optical character recognition. Google notes that won't work with handwriting or some fonts, but it promises it will get better over time. Hit up Android Market to try it out for yourself.

Google Docs gets an Android app, lets you capture text with your phone's camera originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 27 Apr 2011 13:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Android Market, Google Mobile Blog | Email this | Comments

Microsoft Kinect shatters hyper-specific Guinness world record

2011-04-27T09:19:00+00:00

Microsoft's Kinect is clearly gunning to grab the Guinness record for most Guinness records. Back in March, the hands-free peripheral nabbed a certificate naming it the "Fastest Selling Consumer Electronics Device," and now the Xbox Live and Kinect Sports teams are the joint owners of the record for "The Largest Online 100 Metre Sprint" -- after Microsoft managed to convince 10,539 of its closest pals to help it run in place via Xbox Live earlier this month. According to Redmond, the long-winded accomplishment is under consideration for inclusion in a Guinness volume -- though admittedly only the Gamer's Edition spinoff, itself a shoo-in for "most superfluous record book."

Microsoft Kinect shatters hyper-specific Guinness world record originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 27 Apr 2011 05:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Researchers take one step closer to neural-controlled bionic legs for safer mobility

2011-04-26T14:59:00+00:00

We've seen our fair share of prosthetic arms and computer interfaces operated with little more than the firing of a synapse, but legs? They're a different story: balancing and propelling a sack of (mostly) flesh and bone is a much more complicated task than simply picking up a sandwich. Thankfully, the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago's Center for Bionic Medicine is now one step closer to thought-controlled lower-limb prosthetics. As pictured here, the researchers' early simulations showed that amputees could control a virtual knee and ankle with 91-percent accuracy, by way of pattern recognition software to interpret electrical signals delivered through nine different muscles in the thigh -- patients think about moving, thus lighting up the nerves in varying patterns to indicate different motions. The ultimate goal is to hook up bionic legs through the same way, which would offer a greater range of motion than existing prosthetics, making tasks like walking up and down stairs safer. Now all we need is a quadruple amputee willing to pick up a badge and slap on an eye-tracking microdisplay.

Continue reading Researchers take one step closer to neural-controlled bionic legs for safer mobility

Researchers take one step closer to neural-controlled bionic legs for safer mobility originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 26 Apr 2011 10:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Slashdot | Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago | Email this | Comments

iTunes Store quietly generates record revenues of $1.4 billion

2011-04-21T21:40:00+00:00

Apple reported its best quarterly revenues ever for the iTunes Store, which brought in nearly $1.4 billion in the first three months of the year.

iOS and Android continue chipping away at mobile gaming market, consoles remain strong

2011-04-18T08:35:00+00:00

Let's face it -- smartphones (namely, iOS and Android devices) are slowly chipping away at the portable gaming market. If you recall, Apple took a nice slice of the market-share pie -- and as you'll notice in the picture above, we're seeing the same trend this time around. According to data from Flurry and NPD Group, iOS and Android are earning a sizable chunk of the revenue in the portable gaming software sphere, with the Nintendo DS's dominant market share dropping from 70 percent in 2009 to just 57 percent in 2010 to accommodate the newcomers. We may be seeing the decrease in relative revenue because the PSP and DS are on the way out to make room for the NGP and 3DS -- however, this chart speaks only of the current-gen portables. But hey, it's easy for almost anyone to spend a single buck on a full-fledged game, right? Head past the break for some more videogame revenue stats, if you please.

Continue reading iOS and Android continue chipping away at mobile gaming market, consoles remain strong

iOS and Android continue chipping away at mobile gaming market, consoles remain strong originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 18 Apr 2011 04:35:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink TUAW | Flurry | Email this | Comments

Students use Wii Balance Board for kids' physical therapy system (video)

2011-04-17T10:06:00+00:00

Nintendo's kid-tested, researcher-approved Wii Balance Board has struck at the heart of the medical supply industry yet again -- this time, the Bluetooth-connected scale is being used to help physically challenged children at Shriners Hospital in Houston. Seniors at Rice University hand-machined a set of force-sensitive parallel bars and programmed a monster-shooting game called Equilibrium to get kids excited about improving their walking gait, where they can play and score points with each proper step they take. The game automatically ratchets up the difficulty as patients improve, and handrails will play a part too, with a custom three-axis sensor box able to detect how much patients rely on the parallel bars (and dock points accordingly) in an effort to improve their posture. Yep, that sounds just a wee bit more useful than the Balance Board lie detector or the Wii Fit Roomba. Video after the break.

Continue reading Students use Wii Balance Board for kids' physical therapy system (video)

Students use Wii Balance Board for kids' physical therapy system (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 17 Apr 2011 06:06:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Gizmag | Rice University | Email this | Comments

What App Developers Want: Letters To Steve Jobs And Larry Page

2011-04-16T17:00:07+00:00

The next smartphone wave is about to hit. There are rumors that Android 3.1 (Ice Cream Sandwich) will drop in May, and iOS 5 in June. Greg already posted a pretty compelling user’s wish list for the latter, but what developers want is at least as important—because, as the lukewarm-to-appalled recent PlayBook reviews show, it hardly matters how great your hardware is. Nowadays success is all about the apps.

Most users probably don’t appreciate that while both platforms have come a long way from their inglorious beginnings, both still have some painful, glaring flaws from a developer’s perspective. I should know: within the last six months I’ve been paid to write Android, Blackberry, iPhone, and iPad apps. I’ve also released my own pet-project travel app on both the App Store and Android Market, so I’m all too familiar with those headaches too.

Why should you care? Because these are (often) the main reasons why your apps suck, or crash, or both.

A Letter To Steve Jobs and Scott Forstall

Steve Jobs (and Scott Forstall)
One Infinite Loop
Cupertino, CA
USA 95014

Dear Steve,

Please give us garbage collection. Please please please give us garbage collection. I know it isn’t sexy, or shiny, or bezelled. I know users can’t see any difference (except when apps crash, or take twice as long to develop as they should.) But while almost everything else about the iOS SDK—the editor, the libraries, Objective-C itself—is pretty wonderful, its memory management is straight out of the 1980s. As a compatriot recently said with horror, when he first looked at iOS development, “Wait a minute, what decade is this?” It’s like driving a Ferrari with brakes built by Lada.

Memory management, for the uninitiated, refers to how a device shares its limited physical memory among its apps’ virtually unlimited desires. Every modern development environment has an automatic service—a “garbage collector”—which does most of this scutwork. You can still get into memory trouble, believe me, but at least you don’t have to painstakingly allocate and release every block of memory you might want to use beyond the current moment, lest you introduce a bug that is often devilishly difficult to find and fix.

…Unless you’re writing an iOS app. Still. After all these years. W. T. F.!? Some claim that garbage collection is for the weak, but not Apple: OS X has had it for years. Others say it doesn’t work on mobile devices with limited resources. Or at least they did until Android and WebOS emerged; both have been garbage collected from day one.

It’s a bit like the multitasking argument. Reasonable people, in 2009: “Why doesn’t the iPhone multitask, like Android?” Apple fanboys: “Because multitasking is bad, and evil!” Apple, in 2010: “Here’s iOS 4.0, with multitasking!” Apple fanboys: “We have always been at war with Oceania loved multitasking!” Of course, purists would point out that iOS doesn’t actually have real multitasking, like Android.

Dear Steve,

Please give us real multitasking, like Android.

Dear Steve,

Please make it possible to develop iOS apps on something other than a Mac. Not for me; I am very happy with my shiny new MacBook Pro. For you. Because three billion people in the developing world will be buying smartphones over the next decade; they’ll want apps relevant to their culture and lifestyle, ie built by people from their culture and lifestyle; and if you’re a developer in a poor-but-emerging market, would you rather spend $200 to start writing Android apps, or $1000 to start developing for iOS? Exactly. I’ve been saying this for years, Steve, but you haven’t been listening. Which is a shame, because I’d like for your (mostly) slick and elegant OS/SDK to succeed in the rest of the world, too.

That said, I do have my doubts about your general hegemonic approach.

Dear Steve,

I’m actually not going to complain about the App Store. Sure, it takes five days to release an app instead of Android’s five minutes, but that’s due to a philosophical difference which I can respect. (Though it’d be nice if you could cut it down to one day.) But could you please open up the parts of your system that are locked down so tightly that developers can barely touch them at all? Bluetooth, for instance. It’s nice that you let it be used under controlled circumstances for games. But how about letting us use it to send data to other devices? Which, you know, was kind of its whole idea in the first place?

Thanks in advance,

Jon.

PS I’d really settle for just the garbage collection.

A Letter To Larry Page And Andy Rubin

Larry Page (and Andy Rubin)
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA
USA 94043

Dear Larry,

We need to talk.

Don’t get me wrong. On the whole I like Android even more than iOS. True, we have to write your apps in Java, not my favorite language. Yes, some of the tools (eg the debugger) are awfully crude compared to the slick, seamless environment that Apple gives us. I can live with those quirks, though, and otherwise it’s mostly a developer’s dream: powerful, flexible and open(ish).

But we need to talk about fragmentation.

Device fragmentation is bad enough. The layout system you’ve built so that one Android app can work seamlessly on devices with different screen sizes and configurations is clever – but it’s painful. Android UI implementation has become a kind of messy and complex voodoo. That’s why very few Android apps are as slick as their iPhone counterparts. It’s hard to make art out of Lego bricks that never quite seem to fit together seamlessly. And this is apparently about to get even worse, if it’s true that Android 3.1 is meant for smartphones and tablets and televisions. So,

Dear Larry,

Please make it much easier to make attractive and responsive Android apps. Yes, it’s possible today, if you jump through a hundred hoops; but could you maybe cut that number down to ten?

…That’s a minor complaint compared to the real fragmentation problem, though. By which I mean the operating system. By which I mean the carriers.

When Apple releases a new OS, it’s immediately available for every Apple device that can support it. Why can’t Android work like that? Because carriers get in the way. They load devices with irritating, useless cruft, replace vital infrastructure with their own inferior versions (eg crippled Bluetooth stacks) and take forever to update their devices with new OSes.

Why do carriers do this? Because, like the Taliban, they hate our freedom. As a result, according to your own Platform Versions chart, 33% of Android devices are still running Android 2.1 (which came out fifteen months ago) or earlier; so we developers are still reluctant to write apps that take advantage of the new features in Android 2.2, never mind 2.3 or 3.1. That isn’t good for us, and it isn’t good for you.

Dear Larry,

Please set your people free.

Thanks in advance,

Jon.

PS You totally should have gone with that unlocked $99 Nexus One plan.

Image credit: Niccolò Caranti, Flickr

Lower-than-expected Xoom sales prompt Apple iPad competitors to delay tablets

2011-04-15T16:30:00+00:00

A slow start for the Motorola Xoom tablet has reportedly convinced manufacturers to delay the release of Android 3.0 Honeycomb-based tablets as they hope to compete with Apple's iPad.

IDC: Apple passes Acer to grab fourth largest, 8.5% share of US PC market

2011-04-13T21:55:00+00:00

Despite a global 3.2 percent contraction in PC sales and a sharp 10.7 percent downturn in US PC shipments, Apple continued to expand Mac sales in the first quarter of 2011, claiming the number four spot among US PC sellers from Acer and expanding its market share among PCs from 7 percent in the year ago quarter to 8.5 percent.

Report: LA police officers who alleged ticket quota system win $2M judgment

2011-04-12T19:01:00+00:00

Filed under: Etc., Government/Legal, Safety

For the average motorist, dealing with law enforcement usually amounts trying to get out of a traffic citation. So it's understandable that we sometimes are less than thrilled to see them on our roads. But keep in mind that the police are the first responders whenever there is trouble, and the men and women in blue are looking out for our best interests more than many of us realize.

Case in point? Los Angeles police officers Howard Chan and David Benioff sued the city for instituting a ticket quota system (we knew it!). According to the Los Angeles Times, the officers alleged that they were instructed to write up 18 tickets each per shift. And not just any ticket - we're talking high-dollar offenses like blowing stop signs and other major moving violations.

The Los Angeles Times reports that the officers won their civil case by an 11-1 vote and were awarded a $2 million judgment due to a loss of reputation and work actions that resulted from the officers' refusal to meet that quota. Gregory Smith, Benioff's lawyer, says that he hopes the decision helps eradicate quotas, adding that the practice is "a direct violation of the vehicle code and this case was about these officers being asked to break the law."

The city's defense was that the department had broad goals for tickets, but only to improve safety and decrease fatalities. Former LAPD Commander Paul Kim tells a different story, testifying that weather, paramedic response times and the price of gas were more likely more significant reasons for traffic deaths. Hat tip to Bo!

[Source: Los Angeles Times | Image: Corbis]

Report: LA police officers who alleged ticket quota system win $2M judgment originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 12 Apr 2011 14:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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World Bank report finds selling virtual goods in games more profitable than 'real' economy

2011-04-09T08:38:00+00:00

A report commissioned by the World Bank's infoDev unit has cast fresh light on one of the more fascinating aspects of our brave new interconnected world: the virtual economy. The "third-party gaming services industry" -- where wealthy but impatient players have someone else grind away at online games for them in exchange for monetary reward -- is one of the focal points of the study, chiefly owing to it having generated revenues in the region of $3 billion in 2009 and now serving as the primary source of income for an estimated 100,000 young folks, primarily in countries like China and Vietnam. What's encouraging about these findings is that most of the revenue from such transactions ends up in the country where the virtual value is produced, which contrasts starkly with some of the more traditional international markets, such as that for coffee beans, where the study estimates only $5.5 billion of the $70 billion annual market value ever makes it back to the producing country. The research also takes an intriguing look at the emerging phenomenon of microwork, which consists of having unskilled workers doing the web's version of menial work -- checking images, transcribing bits of text, bumping up Facebook Likes (naughty!), etc. -- and could also lead to more employment opportunities for people in poorer nations. To get better acquainted with the details, check the links below or click past the break.

Continue reading World Bank report finds selling virtual goods in games more profitable than 'real' economy

World Bank report finds selling virtual goods in games more profitable than 'real' economy originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 09 Apr 2011 04:38:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink BBC | infoDev (PDF), Virtual Economy Research Network | Email this | Comments

Android to be on 49% of smartphones by 2012, leaving Apple's iOS with 19%, Gartner predicts

2011-04-07T19:45:00+00:00

Gartner's latest forecast for worldwide smartphone operating system market share predicts that Google Android will be present on nearly half of all handsets sold next year, while the iPhone and its iOS operating system will account for 19 percent of units sold.

The Pragmatic Bookshelf

2011-04-04T23:06:18+00:00

Think about that for just a second. You can’t do “agile” and make yourself better. You can only do things better and in the process become more agile

iOS 4.3.1 jailbreak released as Toyota advertises on hacked iPhones

2011-04-04T13:40:00+00:00

Hackers have released an untethered jailbreak for the latest version of Apple's mobile operating system, iOS 4.3.1, for all devices but the iPad 2. And jailbreaking has caught the attention of Toyota, which has created a custom iPhone theme to promote its Scion brand.

Evoluce releases Kinect-based 'Win & I' gesture interface for Windows 7

2011-04-04T13:38:00+00:00

We've already seen Evoluce toy around with using a Kinect to control Windows, but it's now taken things one step further with its new "Win & I" software, which promises to let anyone do the same with minimal effort. That comes in both a home edition that offers gesture controls for Windows 7 itself, plus Media Center and other applications (which could be particularly handy for a home theater), as well as a business edition that apparently adds some extra controls specifically tailored to Microsoft Office, and PowerPoint in particular. Head on past the break for a quick video demonstration, and hit up the link below to snag the software if you're interested -- the home edition runs €20, or just under $30 (Kinect not included, obviously).

Update: Well, it looks like Evoluce already has a bit of competition. Upstart company So Touch has now also released its Air Presenter software that will let you liven up your next presentation with more gesturing and hand-waving than usual.

Continue reading Evoluce releases Kinect-based 'Win & I' gesture interface for Windows 7

Evoluce releases Kinect-based 'Win & I' gesture interface for Windows 7 originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 04 Apr 2011 09:38:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Download Squad | Evoluce | Email this | Comments

More customers exposed as big data breach grows (Reuters)

2011-04-03T23:27:48+00:00

Reuters - The names and e-mails of customers of Citigroup Inc and other large U.S. companies, as well as College Board students, were exposed in a massive and growing data breach after a computer hacker penetrated online marketer Epsilon.

Kinect quadrocopter gets a new mission: 3D mapping (video)

2011-04-01T13:06:00+00:00

In the future, our flying robot overlords won't just navigate terrain autonomously, they'll also report back to base with detailed 3D maps of everything they've seen -- or at least that's what this homebuilt UAV does in a video released this week. In a nutshell, MIT's combined its room-mapping Roomba with the Kinect quadrocopter radar developed at UC Berkeley, resulting in a flying contraption sure to be the envy of topographers everywhere. We're not sure that the world's robot incumbents will be too happy, though -- perhaps MIT should invest in some laser protection next.

Kinect quadrocopter gets a new mission: 3D mapping (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 01 Apr 2011 09:06:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Slashdot, sUAS News | MIT Robust Robotics Group | Email this | Comments

Atlassian - Angry Nerds

2011-04-01T01:05:32+00:00

More process than progress. This dev fails fast and fails often.

LG Selling Cheap Android Phone At Woolworths | Gizmodo Australia

2011-03-31T01:22:33+00:00

Ah, the beauty of open source mobile - You can pack them full of features and charge a mint, or you can keep the features pretty basic and unleash it ...

Ford's second-gen SYNC system off to a buggy start *UPDATE

2011-03-30T20:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Safety, Technology, Ford, Lincoln

In 2010, Ford reinvented its SYNC system with the launch of the refreshed Ford Edge and Lincoln MKX. But the new integrated system - MyFord Touch and MyLincoln Touch or what's known as "SYNC generation 2" - has been plagued by more than a few bugs. And part of the problem is due to its design.

If one of its various functions trips up - navigation, phone or entertainment, among others - the system can restart. This can leave the driver faced with a blank display and a restart procedure that can take two to three minutes. Double bummer: It usually wipes out your paired phones and indexed music.

After talking with several colleagues who have experienced similar issues (including one where the volume was stuck on max while the A/C continued to blow cold air in 42-degree weather) and experiencing these issues first hand for ourselves, we called up Ford's Head of Technology Communications, Alan Hall, and got on the phone with one of the Blue Oval's engineers to see what's causing the issues and how the automaker is addressing them.

Continue reading Ford's second-gen SYNC system off to a buggy start...

*UPDATE: Official statement from Ford added after the jump.

Continue reading Ford's second-gen SYNC system off to a buggy start *UPDATE

Ford's second-gen SYNC system off to a buggy start *UPDATE originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 30 Mar 2011 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Home - ThingSpeak

2011-03-29T21:58:00+00:00

ThingSpeak is an open source “Internet of Things” application and API to store and retrieve data from “things” using HTTP over the Internet or via a Local Area Network. With ThingSpeak, you can create sensor logging applications, location tracking applications, and a social network of things with status updates

Coulomb's ChargePoint app now provides EV charging station status

2011-03-29T21:21:00+00:00

There's unfortunately still no Android version, but Coulomb has now rolled out a fairly significant update to its ChargePoint app for iOS and BlackBerry. In addition to helping you locate EV charging stations in the United States, Europe and Australia, the app will now also provide realtime charging status information, including things like the total cost to charge and the current charging station configuration. Other improvements include a new landscape mode, the ability to view your home ChargePoint station, and the ability to just search for nearby ChargePoint stations (within a thousand foot radius). Full press release is after the break.

Continue reading Coulomb's ChargePoint app now provides EV charging station status

Coulomb's ChargePoint app now provides EV charging station status originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 29 Mar 2011 17:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Telematics News | iTunes Preview, BlackBerry App World | Email this | Comments

Apple's iOS 5 rumored to have 'deep' voice command integration

2011-03-29T12:45:00+00:00

A new rumor claims Apple plans to vastly improve voice commands on devices like the iPhone and iPad with the anticipated release of iOS 5 later this year.

Google Cracks the Code on Good Managers | The QuickBase Blog

2011-03-29T02:53:11+00:00

In the IT industry, as with many industries, the career track typically goes something like this: Software Developer > Senior Software Developer >

Qatar building fleet of remote control 'clouds' for World Cup 2022

2011-03-27T07:17:00+00:00

When Qatar, an insanely wealthy Arab emirate roughly the size of Connecticut, won the bid to host the 2022 World Cup, one of the stipulations was that its newly constructed open-air soccer stadiums would be air conditioned. Of course, this is Qatar we're talkin' about here, so the solution would have to be as extravagant as its insanely wealthy Arab emirate status implies. That's why it was no huge shock when The Peninsula reported plans to cool at least some of the nine stadiums by using a fleet of solar powered "clouds," designed and constructed by a certain Dr. Saud Abdul Ghani and his team. Dr. Ghani, the head of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at Qatar University, said that the aircraft (more accurately described as really, really slow drones) will be operated by remote control, made of 100 percent light carbonic materials, and will initially cost half a million dollars each. But, really, what's a few million dollars when it's for a good cause?

Qatar building fleet of remote control 'clouds' for World Cup 2022 originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 27 Mar 2011 03:17:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink NBC | The Peninsula | Email this | Comments

Samsung caught presenting actors as Galaxy Tab "consumers," fudging thinnest tablet claims

2011-03-26T01:55:00+00:00

After being forced to admit that its two million Galaxy Tabs last fall were just inventory and not actually sales to consumers, Samsung is now being accused of paying actors to pretend to be Galaxy Tab buyers and faking its claim that its redesigned tablet will be thinner than iPad 2 as originally claimed.

Firm sees apps driving 50% sales growth for Apple through 2012

2011-03-24T06:45:00+00:00

The founder of a prominent market research firm said Wednesday that he expects Apple to continue to post more than 50 percent sales growth over the next two years as burgeoning demand for mobile applications drives sales of Apple's mobile devices.

Chrome 11 goes beta with speech-to-text capabilities

2011-03-23T15:52:00+00:00

Well, it looks like Google is unsurprisingly adding more than just a new logo to the latest version of its Chrome browser -- the just-released beta of Chrome 11 also now boasts speech-to-text capabilities. That comes in the form of support for the HTML5 speech input API, which web developers will be able to take advantage of to let folks simply talk to websites and have their speech magically transcribed to text. Also making a first appearance in the beta is support for GPU-accelerated 3D CSS, which will let developers apply all sorts of 3D effects to websites -- Blingee will never be the same, surely. Hit up the link below to try it out for yourself.

Chrome 11 goes beta with speech-to-text capabilities originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 23 Mar 2011 11:52:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink TechCrunch | Google Chrome Blog, Chrome Beta (download) | Email this | Comments

Audi Connect signs contract with T-Mobile, surprised like the rest of us by the AT&T thing

2011-03-23T03:45:00+00:00

T-Mobile subscribers at this point are preparing for what could be a new, blue overlord, and now you can count Audi among the ranks of those wondering what's next. Yesterday the company with the rings signed on with the company with the magenta to power its Audi Connect system on US cars. It'll launch first with the 2012 Audi A7, where it will provide the wireless data pipe through which the car's MMI infotainment system will pull down Google Earth imagery, Local Search POIs, Sirius Traffic information, and even act like a Quattro hotspot for folks in the back seat. Audi's not specified how much this service will cost, but "not free" sounds like a safe bet for now.

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Audi Connect signs contract with T-Mobile, surprised like the rest of us by the AT&T thing originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 22 Mar 2011 23:45:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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