Archive for May 21st, 2009

Responding to a Government Accountability Office report that warns of major GPS failures as early as next year, U.S. Air Force Col. Dave Buckman has responded, saying: “No way! As if! The issue is under control.” If anything, he said, “there’s only a small risk we will not continue to exceed our performance standard.” Whew, that’s a relief… we don’t know what we’d do without our Knight Rider GPS to keep us company on those long, lonely car rides.

[Via Pocket-lint]

Filed under: GPS

Air Force says that GPS situation is ‘under control,’ urges you to ‘chill out’ originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 21 May 2009 16:32:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We thought it’d be a good idea to get all touchy-feely with Dell’s latest — and its most family friendly — all-in-one, the Studio One 19, and while there are things we like, there are certainly a bunch of things that we wish they had done differently. Although it’s already gotten some lukewarm reviews, we decided to put it through its paces and check it out for ourselves. Click on after the break for more of our impressions and what we really thought about this interesting machine.

Continue reading Dell Studio One 19 unboxing, hands-on, and impressions

Filed under: Desktops, Media PCs, Tablet PCs

Dell Studio One 19 unboxing, hands-on, and impressions originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 21 May 2009 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Well, if today’s batch of rumors are true, it looks like the PSP could be in for quite a few changes beyond the seemingly inevitable hardware revision. As Develop is now reporting, in addition to those rumored music downloads, the PSP could soon also be getting a full-fledged game rental service, which would, of course, be one more means of making a UMD-less PSP a more appealing device (for game developers and consumers alike). Apparently, the service was first pitched to developers at GDC back in March, and was again mentioned in a consumer survey that just surfaced yesterday. What’s more, while complete details are expectedly a bit light, the service would apparently charge PSP owners a monthly fee that would allow them to download “a fixed number of games” during their subscription period, although it’s not clear if you’d also be able to simply rent ‘em one at a time.

[Via Joystiq]

Filed under: Gaming

Developers reportedly briefed on PSP rental service at GDC originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 21 May 2009 15:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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You’ve little over a month to get your plans sorted for this year’s Glastonbury Festival, and as any techno-pagan worth his salt knows, finding power for all those gadgets as you dance your ass off in a big field for five days can be a challenge in and of itself. Luckily, it looks like the fine folks at Orange UK have taken it upon themselves to serve this niche market every year, as evidenced by the likes of last year’s Dance Charge and this year’s Power Pump. It’s pretty straight forward — the foot pump drives a turbine, which powers a tiny generator. According to the company’s groovy PR, the turbine will generate enough energy to power 5 minutes of call time in the time it takes to inflate your pillow. No word yet on retail availability, so look out for it at the company’s tent. Rave on!

Gallery: Orange’s pump charger puts your two left feet to good use

[Via Oh Gizmo!]

Filed under: Cellphones

Orange’s pump charger puts your two left feet to good use originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 21 May 2009 15:07:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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NEC just rolled out a pair of 26- and 30-inch monitors for graphics professionals earlier this year, and it’s now kicked out a slightly smaller 24-inch model that hangs onto the same nondescript looks and many of the same specs. That includes the usual 1,920 x 1,200 resolution, a 1:000:1 contrast ratio, a DVI port with HDCP support (but no HDMI), and a slew of dedicated image processing and color calibration features. No official word on a release over here, but folks in Japan can pick this one up next month for ¥135,000, or just over $1,400.

[Via Impress]

Filed under: Displays

NEC rolls out 24-inch LCD2490WUXi2 monitor originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 21 May 2009 14:46:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Guard your retinas, fashionistas — this one’s bound to burn. Data Ltd has just loosed its latest ultra-rugged tablet PC, and it’s quite clear that the gains in rigidity come at a severe cost to style. The DLI 8400 is actually rather diminutive for a tablet, weighing just three pounds and packing a 7-inch sunlight-viewable LCD. Other specs include a backlit QWERTY keypad, GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth, built-in WWAN, 2GB of RAM, twin hot-swappable batteries (good for nine hours of use) and a shock-mounted HDD or SSD. Naturally, the IP54-rated enclosure is home to Intel’s 1.6GHz Atom CPU, and there’s a plethora of ports for field workers with gobs of peripherals. The Q2-bound rig gets going at $1,795, and while there’s no telling what kind of beating this thing can survive, it’s obviously done well to walk away from that awful plummet from atop the ugly tree. [Warning: PDF read link]

Filed under: Tablet PCs

DLI 8400 ultra-rugged tablet is as far from pretty as it gets originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 21 May 2009 14:24:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s not quite on the level of some of Microsoft’s past patent showdowns, but a Texas federal jury found yesterday that the company should pay a still hefty $200 million in damages to Canadian software firm i4i Ltd for some supposed wrong doing. That company had alleged that Microsoft knowingly infringed on one of its patents in both Word and Vista, which apparently concerned “manipulating a document’s content and architecture separately.” For its part, Microsoft unsurprisingly begs to differ, and says that “the evidence clearly demonstrated that we do not infringe and that the i4i patent is invalid,” adding that it will, of course, “ask the court to overturn the verdict.”

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Jury awards i4i $200 million in damages in Microsoft patent suit originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 21 May 2009 14:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’ve got to say, we’re guessing both Survivor and Prince would approve here, as this is easily one of the most impressive uses of a heart rate sensor yet. Anaid Gomez Ortigoza, a bright young lass at NYU, has whipped up what she’s calling kokoro, which translates into “the heart of things” in Japanese. Put as simply as possible, this prototype project allows for iPod playlists to be shuffled depending on one’s current heart rate; if your heart is pumping some kind of fierce, the device will likely cue up a little M83, and if you’re at rest, you just might get to hear a smooth jam from the likes of Copeland. Don’t believe us, though — hop on past the break for a demonstrative video.

[Via talk2myshirt]

Continue reading Sensor-laden kokoro adjusts playlist to match the rhythm of your heart

Filed under: Peripherals, Portable Audio

Sensor-laden kokoro adjusts playlist to match the rhythm of your heart originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 21 May 2009 13:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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digg_url = ‘http://digg.com/gadgets/BlackBerry_Storm_2_the_official_unofficial_hands_on’;

We’ve been bumping into the new BlackBerry Storm 2 for quite a while now on the so-called “information superhighway,” but we’ve finally had a chance to escalate those encounters and spend a few sweet moments with a live unit in the flesh. First off, let’s confirm the huge news: RIM’s abandoned the original Storm’s SurePress click-screen and gone with a traditional fixed capacitive display for the sequel. It’s over, guys. Unfortunately, the Verizon-branded dual-mode GSM / CDMA unit that we played with has a bug preventing us from getting past the license screen so we couldn’t dive deep into the OS (and yeah, we tried scrolling to the bottom of the agreement — no dice), but we can tell you what we do know: the Storm 2′s sleeker style and more heft combined with the newly-stable screen collaborate to make everything feel a wee bit higher end than the original. Follow the break for more impressions!

Continue reading BlackBerry Storm 2: the official unofficial hands-on

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

BlackBerry Storm 2: the official unofficial hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 21 May 2009 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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There’s little doubt that Yahoo Widgets took the HDTV market by storm at CES, in fact by the end of the first day of the show, it was news if a manufacturer didn’t announce the feature. Initially we didn’t understand what all the fuss was about, but after spending some time with the Widgets, we started to see the light. Unfortunately something has changed in the past five months and now that we have it in our home to play with, it just doesn’t seem the same. The one word we’d use to describe the difference is “laggy” — check out the video after the break to see for yourself. The demos at CES were down right snappy, but even in our hard wired tests connected to the internet via a 20Mbps FiOS connection, the widgets loaded so slow we’re not sure we’d actually even use ‘em. To make matters worse, because most people don’t have internet connections behind their HDTV, they’re going to need some sort of WiFi adapter to make this work. The Samsung 7000 series HDTV we tested has an optional USB dongle that sells for $80, but we couldn’t even get it to work despite the hour of our life we wasted on it.

Continue reading Hands-on with Yahoo Widgets on a Samsung 7000 series HDTV

Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment

Hands-on with Yahoo Widgets on a Samsung 7000 series HDTV originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 21 May 2009 12:44:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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