Archive for June 22nd, 2009

Details are still a little light on this one, but The Wall Street Journal is reporting that both T-Mobile and Verizon will be offering Android-based phones from Motorola before the end of the year, according to “people familiar with the matter.” While the Verizon phone is still a bit iffy, the T-Mobile offering seems to almost certainly be the Motorola Morrision which, as you can see above, is already pretty well acquainted with T-Mo branding. According to one of those people familiar with the matter, Verizon’s Moto phone will have “similar hardware to the T-Mobile one,” including a touchscreen and a slide-out keyboard, which doesn’t exactly rule out Motorola’s rumored Calgary slider, even if “similar” isn’t the first word that springs to mind when discussing the two.

[Via Electronista]

Filed under: Cellphones

T-Mobile, Verizon set to offer Android-based Motorola phones this year originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 22 Jun 2009 16:41:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We reported a few weeks ago that Tesla co-founder Martin Eberhard filed a lawsuit against Tesla and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, citing allegations of slander, libel and breach of contract. Tesla issued a short statement when the lawsuit was filed, calling the lawsuit a “fictionalized account of Tesla’s early years.” Now Musk has taken to Tesla’s blog to give his own version of the messy situation. Unrelated to the lawsuit, Musk says that Tesla will be profitable by next month, thanks to lower material costs, and increased Roadster Sport sales.

Musk responded to several of Eberhard’s allegations that he lied about his background and fictionalized pieces of his resume to embellish the truth. Particularly, Musk addresses Eberhard’s complaints that the PayPal founder misrepresented his education. Musk maintains that he did his undergraduate studies in physics and business at UPenn/Wharton (we confirmed this with Wharton—Musk was an undergraduate alum and holds degrees from both Wharton and the College of Arts & Sciences) and despite dropping out of grad school at Stanford, maintained affiliations with the university by working with the Stanford Engineering Advisory Council.

It looks like QNAP’s insane desire to present the market with bigger and better network storage continues unabated. The SS-839 Pro Turbo NAS is being billed as the world’s smallest 8-bay Intel Atom NAS, featuring a 1.6GHz N270 processor, 2GB memory, up to eight 2.5-inch hard drives or solid state disks, up to 4TB storage capacity, 2 eSATA and 5 USB ports. Power consumption with eight hard drives installed is about 34W. Software features include the usual: thin provisioning, online RAID capacity expansion and level migration, AES 256-bit volume-based encryption, Wake on LAN, SMS and email alerts, network surveillance via IP cameras, and the like. So, what are you waiting for? Hit that read link for the full, unexpurgated story.

Gallery: QNAP’s SS-839 Pro Tubo NAS keeps it real with 8 bays and 4TB RAID storage

Filed under: Storage

QNAP’s SS-839 Pro Tubo NAS keeps it real with 8 bays and 4TB RAID storage originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 22 Jun 2009 16:23:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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They may not be quite as thin and light as Acer’s Timeline laptops, but the company’s latest trio of Aspire models will at least save you a few bucks, and give you some decent enough specs as well. On the low-end of the lot are the 15.6-inch AS5536 and the 17.3-inch AS7735Z (pictured above), the former of which packs an AMD Athlon 64 X2 processor, 3GB of DDR2 RAM, ATI Radeon HD 3200 graphics, and a 320GB hard drive, while the latter sports a Pentium T4200 processor, 4GB of DDR3 RAM, Intel GMA 4500MHD graphics, and a 250GB hard drive. Both of those, however, are bested by the 15.6-inch AS5739G, which dials things up to a Core 2 Duo T6500 processor, 4GB of RAM, NVIDIA Geforce GT130M graphics with 1GB of memory, a 250GB hard drive, and a built-in Blu-ray drive — all for just $750. Look for all three to be available this month, with the AS5536 and AS7735Z running $480 and $600.

Filed under: Laptops

Acer rolls out new budget-minded Aspire laptops originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 22 Jun 2009 15:52:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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When the iPhone 3G S was announced at this year’s WWDC conference, I first wrote it as the “iPhone 3GS” and was corrected by a colleague that according to Apple, there was a space between the “G” and the “S.” That seemed to be the case on Apple’s entire website. But today, with its million units sold announcement, I noticed that Apple has apparently moved to calling the device the iPhone 3GS — with no space. And I’m hardly the only one who noticed the change.

So which is it, Apple?

Obviously, this isn’t a huge deal, but considering how many people are writing stories, posts, tweeting, etc, about the device right now, you’d think Apple would like to have one correct name out there. But it seems that it’s not even sure. While the press release this morning has “iPhone 3GS,” the website still has “iPhone 3G S.”

Every day the Internet pays lip service to the “apps” “yanked” by Apple. But what happens when something Apple does in the SDK shuts down an entire type of app, namely the camera apps that added interesting new functionality to the phone?

Jared Brown write Quick Shot, an app that added a number of cool features to the iPhone camera.

Apple has decided to strictly enforce their SDK guidelines with the release of 3.0, leaving potentially millions of iPhone users with applications that will not be compatible with iPhone OS 3.0. Maybe you are already aware of this, but I had not seen anything written on Techcrunch and thought it was compelling enough to bring to your attention.

Our company, Code Monkeys at Work, produces an application, Quick Shot. It’s a camera application, not unlike Night Camera. It has been live in the App Store since mid-Feb. When the 3.0 beta came out we updated it to be compatible and submitted it. Each time we submit an update to Quick Shot we cross our fingers, since we always get a different reviewer who takes issue with features/graphics/text that were already approved in earlier versions. Although this time when it got rejected it caught us by complete surprise.

We got a quick look Disney’s little Netpal Eee PC rebadge, and found our not-too-high expectations slightly exceeded by the fairly slick skin Disney has slapped on top of XP. The Netpal platform is really Disney’s primary contribution here, since the computer underneath is vanilla Eee PC other than the fairly stylish “boy” and “girl” skinning job. The shell, however, is a locked down environment that allows parents to white list web sites and email addresses for kids to access, along with a list of allowable apps — kids aren’t restricted to just Disney’s set of experiences, little Bobby can master PowerPoint in between play dates if his parents don’t mind. Standard netbook sluggishness is of course a drawback, but the extensive parental controls, kid-friendly interface and $350 retail price are all good omens for rising above the general shoddiness and usual misnomer of “kid tech.” Video is after the break.

Continue reading Disney Netpal hands-on (with video!)

Filed under: Laptops

Disney Netpal hands-on (with video!) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 22 Jun 2009 15:28:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Kevin Marks, a social force within Google and one of the main drivers behind its recent social efforts (including OpenSocial, its Social Graph API, and Microformats) is leaving the company. He announced his departure today on his blog. Marks was an evangelist to other engineers outside Google, his official title was Developer Advocate. For many Web developers outside Google, he has been the public face of its social efforts in recent years.

Contacted by phone, Marks says he is working on a bunch of things “related to the social Web” and “activity streams,” but declined to get into specifics. Asked why he is leaving Google, he responds that his work is pretty much completed: “Over the last two years, we have built out the infrastructure for the social Web. Now it is time to build things on that infrastructure.”

Microsoft has already come out and clarified Steve Ballmer’s recent statement that Project Natal would be rolling out sometime in 2010 (possibly in the form of a new Xbox console), but it looks like the man himself also felt the need to set the record straight. Speaking with IGN, Ballmer said that he “confused the issue with my poorly chosen words,” adding that, “there is no news in my comments. Things are as reported after E3. Sorry.” Of course, this would be somewhat understandable if it were an isolated incident, but as you no doubt recall, Ballmer also recently dropped word of an earlier than expected Zune HD release date, which prompted yet another quick “clarification” from Microsoft. But hey, he only works there.

[Via Joystiq, image courtesy guardian.co.uk]

Filed under: Gaming

Ballmer apologizes for letting slip wrong Natal release date originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 22 Jun 2009 14:56:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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digg_url = ‘http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/22/nokia-n97-review-a-tale-of-two-bloggers/’; Recently, Engadget editors Thomas Ricker and Chris Ziegler received Nokia N97s just days apart from one another. Already established pen pals, the two immediately began to correspond across the Atlantic via carrier pigeon, discussing their very different experiences using Nokia’s most powerful smartphone to date. This is a recounting of those letters.

Thomas,

I hope this letter finds you well. I understand that you’ve received an N97 from Nokia Nederlands recently and was wondering what you thought of it? As luck would have it, I’ve happened across a unit myself — the US was the first country to get them, interestingly, which is really big deal for a company accustomed to delivering its best hardware early and often to Europe. I’ve been flogging it for a few days now, just enough time to form some opinions.

Continue reading Nokia N97 review: a tale of two bloggers

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Nokia N97 review: a tale of two bloggers originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 22 Jun 2009 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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