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Showing posts from May 8, 2011

Mushroom TelePorter does HD streaming over cellular, won't beam your on-air talent anywhere

If you need to be live and on the scene but can't be followed around with a remote truck and its retractable 100-foot antenna, you need a TelePorter. The camel-case 'P' should tell you that this is not the final realization of Gene Roddenberry's dream, rather a device created by Mushroom Networks, long known for products with goofy names like the PortaBella, which aggregates the bandwidth from multiple wireless modems to make one super mobile hotspot. The TelePorter basically takes that tech and adds some video wizardry to it, plus packaging that enables it to be mounted to the back of a camera. The result is live, full-HD streaming of footage straight from the camera and into the ether. Mushroom wouldn't tell us a price, saying that it varies based on configuration, but unless your camera's as big as the one pictured after the break we're thinking this might just put a real hurting on your budget.     Mushroom Networks Unveils TelePorter™ with

Photoshop Touch apps and SDK extend desktop functionality to iPad and other tablets

Any discussion about Adobe and the iPad seems to always devolve into a Flash vs. HTML5 debate. For today at least, Adobe's hoping to temporarily refocus the conversation on a trio of new tools that extend desktop Photoshop functionality to the iPad via native iOS apps. First up is Adobe Eazel, an iPad drawing app that lets you create a five-fingered painting on the iPad before transferring it back over WiFi to the Photoshop application running on your Mac or PC. Adobe Nav turns the iPad into a Photoshop companion device by extending live controls and menu bars from the Photoshop workspace to the iPad's display. Finally, there's Adobe Color Lava which turns the iPad into a hi-tech color mixing palette. Of course, these are just the first in what Adobe hopes to be a full range of Photoshop extensions hitting app stores just as soon as devs get their talents around Adobe's Photoshop Touch programming tools (consisting of a Photoshop scripting engine and enhance

LG shows off 47-inch transparent IPS LCD with multitouch and Full HD resolution (video)

Where Samsung leads, LG inevitably follows (and vice versa, of course). The Korean electronic arms race has now heated up by an extra few degrees with LG's demo of a crazy new 47-inch display that packs in everything a geek could want: IPS technology, 1080p resolution, multitouch, and some good old transparency... just because. This so-called Window Display is sadly intended for advertisers and other digital signage proprietors, meaning that even if it wasn't still at the concept stage, it likely wouldn't be populating living rooms anyway. Ah well, so long as LG makes sure John Anderton and the precrime unit get one, we'll be happy. Video for the rest of us after the break.     OLED-Display.net

CyanogenMod 7.0 is now final, ready for your consumption

Is your phone manufacturer's Android ROM not treating you quite the way it should? Worry not, Cyanogen's got your back as usual and has just released the final v7.0 of the CyanogenMod, now based on Android 2.3.3. There's an extensive list of supported Android handsets, which is now also augmented with a couple of tablets: the B&N Nook Color and the Viewsonic G Tablet. As usual with custom ROMs, we advise reading up and making sure you know what you're doing before you do it, but if you're already up to speed on the latest in homebrewed Android, this is the moment you've been eagerly waiting for. Full details of the changes made in version 7 plus instructions on how to get it set up on your Android device can be found below.   CyanogenMod

Apple reportedly hires top UK gaming PR execs from Nintendo and Activision

As you may have noticed, Apple has been more serious about gaming lately that it was even during its Pippin-fueled haze in the mid-1990s, and it's now offering yet more evidence of just how invested it is with a pair of new hires. While the company isn't confirming the move just yet, MCV is reporting that Apple has snatched up Nintendo UK's former head of communications, Rob Saunders, who just left the big N last week and will apparently be focusing on PR for iOS apps at Apple. What's more, he'll reportedly be joined at Apple by former Activision PR director Nick Grange, who's said to be focusing specifically on the iPad -- which, as we've seen, can be a pretty versatile gaming device in its own right. Apple Insider MCV

LG adds 'Tweet-TV' enabled Android phone to its list of Mobile DTV prototypes

Whenever mobile digital television broadcasts finally take off LG will be ready and its latest concept design -- following the autostereoscopic 3D screen shown at CES -- is the Tweet-TV pictured above. At the National Association of Broadcasters show this week it's demonstrating the prototype Android phone with a Harris MDTV antenna that also pulls in relevant tweets and displays them over the broadcast being watched. Whether or not a dose of social networking will help MDTV succeed where others have failed remains to be seen but first we'll see if it manages to reach 40% of the US population later this year. The press release and a bigger picture follow after the break.       LG ELECTRONICS SHOWS EXPANSIVE CAPABILITIES OF MOBILE DIGITAL TV, DEMONSTRATING 'TWEET-TV' SOCIAL NETWORKING, ELECTRONIC COUPONS, 'GLASSES FREE' 3D Prototype displays, Smartphones highlight flexibility of mobile DTV standard LAS VEGAS -- Apr 08, 2011 / (http://www.myprgenie.

Rogue modder rips off stingy consumer, puzzles repairmen... all with a USB thumb drive

Welcome to today's episode of "You Get What You Pay For," starring some poor sap in Russia who bought an external hard drive in China for a "very, very low price." It seemed like a bargain, until the schmo noticed that video files were picking up from the tail end, as if the preceding footage had vanished. When the folks at a local repair shop tore the disk apart they found a dinky 128MB thumb drive running in a loop, emptying itself when full only to start saving more data. Laugh all you want, but the repair guys (and us, frankly) are still scratching their heads as to how those scam artists pulled off this mod in the first place.  Hardmac

HTC Flyer hits UK pre-order status at £600, comes with 3G and 32GB of storage

The one Android tablet that isn't riding NVIDIA's Tegra 2 dual-core chip and Google's Honeycomb iteration (but might still be worth buying) has this weekend become available to pre-order in the UK. The Carphone Warehouse is listing a £600 ($983) fee for owning the HTC Flyer, which is more or less a match for the €669 price Amazon.de is offering to German slate lovers. In exchange for a dozen rose-tinted notes with the Queen's face on them, you'll get a 7-inch, 1024 x 600 display, encased in an aluminum unibody case and powered by a 1.5GHz Qualcomm chip. HTC's Sense UI has undergone some tablet-friendly tweaks and there is of course that Scribe stylus to flex your artistic muscles with. 3G connectivity and 32GB of storage flesh out the Flyer's hardware offering, while the underlying Android Gingerbread OS is promised to get a Honeycomb-flavored update, most likely some time this summer.

Ralph Lauren's solar-panel backpack charges your phone in hours, your credit card in seconds

We here at Engadget are in favor of hitting the books from time to time, but we can't have lame gadget-less backpacks hurting our true techie rep. That's why we're excited to see Ralph Lauren outing its first solar-equipped knapsack as part of its RLX sports line. Four solar cells around back harness the sun's power to generate 3.45 watts -- completely juicing up an iPhone in a purported two-to-three hours, assuming you've got "proper sunlight orientation," of course. Like the optional orange hue (it also comes in black), the sun-sucking cells aren't particularly low profile -- but for $800 don't you want something, uh, recognizable? Still, if you simply must be that guy be sure to hit the source link and don't look back, but for everyone else, might we recommend a portable USB charger for a little less coin? Complex Ralph Lauren

Acer's Windows-powered Iconia W500 up for pre-order for $549, ships April 15th

Acer already announced UK pricing for the Windows 7 and Android Honeycomb versions of its Iconia Tab, and now it's ready to take both stateside. Days after Best Buy started taking pre-orders for the Android 3.0-powered Iconia Tab A500, the Windows-based W500 has shown up on B&H's site for $549. Like its cousin, the W500 has a 10.1-inch (1280 x 800) display, HDMI-out and dual cameras, though it steps up to 2GB of RAM, 32GB of storage, AMD Radeon HD 6250 graphics, and a 1GHz Ontario (C-50) AMD Fusion APU. It also comes with a keyboard dock, putting it in the same price range as ASUS's Android-based Eee Transformer, which costs less but doesn't include its similar-looking keyboard. Acer rates the W500's three-cell battery at up to six hours -- a far cry from the iPad's promised 10-hours and, perhaps, a good reason to wait for slates featuring that lower-power Fusion APU AMD's been shopping around to tablet makers. B&H says it'll ship st

Samsung Galaxy S II to be available May 1st in the UK

Samsung has just delivered a most welcome (and concrete) bit of news for British smartphone lovers. Its next do-it-all Android superphone will be available on May 1st in the United Kingdom. The Galaxy S II will emulate its predecessor by being made available "across all major networks and retailers." The press release promises a 1.2GHz dual-core processor, which indicates we're looking at the Exynos 4210 variant of this handset. We'll try to track down availability information for the rest of Europe, but at least Brits can now stop fretting about the delay / non-delay of this marquee phone's launch. SAMSUNG ANNOUNCES UK AVAILABILITY OF THE GALAXY S II Samsung's most powerful smartphone yet set to hit UK shores on 1st May 11th April 2011, London, UK – Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., today announces that its slimmest and lightest smartphone yet, the Samsung Galaxy S II (Model: GT-I9100), will be available in UK shops on 1st May 2011. The Galaxy S I

JBL ships AirPlay-enabled On Air speaker dock, charges stiff premium for wireless luxury

It's a familiar face, sure, but there's a key ingredient thrown here that's been lacking on JBL's prior iDevice docks: AirPlay. We're still waiting (and waiting) to see if Apple's going to expand its licensing program to allow third-party vendors the ability to toss in AirPlay video streaming, but for now, JBL's taking advantage of what's out there. The On Air Wireless AirPlay speaker dock -- which is shipping today to Best Buy and Apple Stores after being teased a few weeks ago -- is now good and official, enabling consumers to wirelessly stream their iTunes library from Macs, PCs, iPhones, iPods or iPads right to the dock. Aside from a rather unorthodox design (which should go a long way to dispersing jams in a 360-degree fashion), you'll also find a color LCD, digital FM radio, an inbuilt alarm clock, DSP technology and a proprietary adapter that enables it to be worn as headgear at your next rave. We're guessing that final bit mak

Apple hires carbon fiber expert to posit composites

If you're going to compete in the consumer electronics business then you'd better have a solid grasp of industrial design and materials science. Otherwise, you're just another manufacturer trying to eke profit from drab slabs of commodity plastic. With the exception of the MacBook, Apple's entire Mac lineup is currently cut from aluminum. However, Apple's been caught experimenting with its newly acquired Liquidmetal materials recently, even as rumors swirl around new ultra-lightweight and durable carbon fiber components and enclosures. Speculation about the latter has been fueled by an Apple patent application for a process that would use carbon fiber materials woven into the reinforced device housings of mobile telephones, laptops, desktops, and tablets. Interestingly enough, the patent app was filed by Kevin M. Kenney (developer of the first all carbon fiber bicycle frame) on behalf of Apple back in 2009, a man who changed his job title to "Senio

Gartner: Apple will dominate tablet space for years, Android won't drink its milkshake until after 2015

The inundation of tablets upon these very pages from day to day should give you an idea that manufacturers see this as a golden opportunity to grab a big chunk of a fledgling market. According to Gartner, though, the prospects are a little less rosy -- for the next five years, anyway. Analyst estimates indicate that the tablet market will boom over the next five years, from 17,610,000 units last year to 294,093,000 in 2015. No, not 294,092,000. 294,093,000. Apple will be the dominant force, its market share not dropping below 50 percent until the terminal year of this study. Android will take up the lion share of the other half, with the remaining dredges shared by MeeGo, WebOS, and QNX. The latter, which powers RIM's upcoming BlackBerry PlayBook, is scheduled to have a 10 percent share. That'll be the closest thing to a threat that Google and Apple will face -- if you believe any of this. Update : The figures above are in thousands of units.

Nokia E7 review

Over the years, we've seen a steady stream of business and messaging-centric landscape QWERTY smartphones come and go, with HTC arguably leading the pack via its collection of Windows Mobile, Android, and WP7 devices featuring sliding keyboards and tilt-out displays. But few of HTC's offerings are as iconic or memorable as Nokia's line of Communicator clamshell phones -- starting with the Nokia 9000 in 1996, continuing with Symbian S80 models, and culminating with the Nokia E90 atop S60v3. The Nokia E7 is the latest Communicator in this distinguished series and the manufacturer's current flagship device, dethroning the Nokia N8 which continues on as the company's media mogul. A lot has changed in the six months since the N8 was introduced, including Nokia's recent partnership with Microsoft and the stunning announcement that it will be adopting Windows Phone for future high-end smartphones. So, is the E7 -- which is finally shipping in the US -- th

StripeSpotter turns wild zebras into trackable barcodes

We've heard plenty of stories over the past few years about tagging animals with RFID chips, but we've never been particularly keen on the idea. Well, now a team of researchers has come up with a much less invasive way of tracking individual animals -- specifically zebras -- by essentially using their stripes as barcodes. StripeSpotter, as it's known, takes an isolated portion of a photograph of a zebra and slices it into a series of horizontal bands. Each pixel in the selection is then fully converted into black or white, and the bands are in turn encoded into StripeStrings, which eventually make up a StripeCode that resembles a barcode. All this information is stored in a database that allows researchers to directly identify particular animals without ever having to get too close. StripeCode may be a zebra-centric application for now, but its developers see it making a mark across the food chain with the inclusion of other distinctly patterned beasts, like ti

Panasonic's AG-3DA1 camera will shoot 3D video, Robonaut vlogs on the International Space Station

NASA's Robonaut 2 is something of a celebrity around these parts, owing to his dashing good looks and insatiable appetite for publicity, which can now be put to good use with a new toy the landlubbers are sending his way: a professional 3D camera. The human-aiding robot that presently calls the International Space Station home will soon be joined by Panasonic's AG-3DA1, a full 1080p 3D video recorder with twin lenses and dual 2 megapixel 3MOS sensors. Panasonic is also loading up the next Space Shuttle Atlantis flight to the ISS (scheduled for June 28th) with 25.5-inch 3D LCD monitors and rugged Toughbook laptops to help with documenting proceedings aboard the research vessel. The new shooter costs a whopping $21,000, and though it's not clear whether NASA paid for it or Panasonic just decided to be charitable, the space agency should have the cash to splash after deciding to shelve the James Cameron-approved project to slap a zoom-equipped 3D imager on its next

Windows 7 closes gap with XP, is poised to steal top market share this month

As recently as a year ago, Windows XP was the kingpin of PCs in the US with 43.1 percent market share. But that's rapidly changing. StatCounter shows that while Mac OS X is creeping up slightly and Windows Vista continues its death march, Windows 7 is on the rise, steadily closing the gap with trusty ole' XP. Last month, XP's share sank to 32.17 percent, while Windows 7's edged up to 30.84 percent, leaving the latter poised to overtake XP -- something the much-maligned Vista never did. And if early numbers are to be believed, it's already happened: StatCounter says that for the first week in April Windows 7's share (among desktops, at least) totaled 31.71 percent, compared with XP's 31.56. Either way, it seems Microsoft has convinced consumers that it's finally safe to upgrade. TechAbsolute , Royal Pingdom StatCounter