Archive for July 8th, 2009

Sony’s been out there touting its PlayStation Network user numbers for some time now, but it looks like it’s now ratcheting up the rhetoric when it comes to the actual user experience as well. Taking the lead on that front is Sony Computer Entertainment America’s director of PlayStation Network Operations, Eric Lempel, who recently told Industry Gamers that Sony doesn’t think “there’s a lot of ‘catch up’ [with XBL] anymore,” adding that, “in some cases, I think we’ve got more, and we’ve got some other things they don’t have.” Of course, he further goes on to point out that PSN is and has always been free, and he cites PlayStation Home as just one thing that distinguishes PSN from Xbox Live, adding that he doesn’t “see a lot of things they’re doing that we’re not.”. Your move, Microsoft.

[Via Edge Online]

Filed under: Gaming

SCEA’s Lempel says Sony isn’t playing “catch up” with Xbox Live originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 08 Jul 2009 16:49:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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digg_url = ‘http://digg.com/gadgets/Folding_keyboard_brings_a_little_starfighter_to_a_cellphone’; Looks like Samsung’s elves have been busy thinking up new ways to cram a QWERTY onto all those touchscreen phones they’ve been selling lately: check out this patent application for a side-mounted flip-down keyboard. We’re not sure if this would be comfortable, usable, or even stable, but we do know that we support any design decision that makes our phones look more like super-awesome space planes from the future. Carry on, Sammy.

[Via PhoneArena]

Continue reading Samsung’s folding keyboard brings a little starfighter to the cellphone

Filed under: Cellphones

Samsung’s folding keyboard brings a little starfighter to the cellphone originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 08 Jul 2009 16:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Su.pr, StumbleUpon’s URL shortening service, has come out of closed beta. StumbleUpon, which was recently freed from eBay’s clutches, tossed its hat in the URL shortening ring earlier this year. We first heard about Su.pr in March when StumbleUpon CEO Garrett Camp Tweeted about it. Su.pr, like other shortening tools, lets you shorten a URL and share it across Twitter, Facebook, and StumbleUpon.

The nifty part of Su.pr’s service is that it gives you a dashboard to help you keep track of how many times your su.pr links have been shared, across which services. You can see how many times each link has been clicked on and retweeted (along with the number of followers for each retweeter). It also lets you schedule shared links across those services for any time you want.

Though the myTouch 3G is really just an HTC Magic at its core, T-Mobile seems to be doing everything it can to gussy it up with as much crapware bloatware value-add software that it can. All kidding aside, this really isn’t crapware — the carrier is apparently quite serious about calling out best-in-class apps in the Android Market, going so far as to create a separate “app pack” application that’ll drill down stuff it wants to highlight. T-Mobile tells us this might even include T-Mobile’s own visual voicemail application, which is currently in development, but whether that’s available at launch or not, nothing in the app pack won’t be findable in the regular Android Market, so there’s no reason to worry.

The crown jewel in the myTouch 3G’s arsenal will be Sherpa, an entertainment discovery app that learns your preferences in food, stores, and attractions over time based on your ratings and bubbles them to the top so they’re easier for you to find. Naturally, it’s location-based so that you can find things around you; it’ll be interesting to see how well this works in practice, but at a glance, we’re excited to give it a shot so that we can finally stop eating In-N-Out seven nights a week (not to say there’s anything wrong with that).

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

T-Mobile pushing apps hard with myTouch 3G; Sherpa pictured, detailed originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 08 Jul 2009 15:56:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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23andMe isn’t making too many headlines in tech circles any more, but there’s little doubt in my mind that it, or at least companies like it, will become incredibly important over the next decade or so. Affordable genetic testing will likely revolutionize the way we treat health care, and its effects on society will be profound. And well known celebrities like Sergey Brin (who happens to be married to 23andMe co-founder Anne Wojcicki), are already beginning to publicly demonstrate some of the benefits of learning your genetic forecast.

Still, it’s hard to really call 23andMe “affordable” for most people at this point. The price has come down drastically from the $1000 Michael paid when he tried it out in late 2007 (it’s now only $399), but that’s still pretty steep for testing that most people probably have a hard time wrapping their heads around in the first place.

If you are wondering how Facebook plans to compete with MySpace as a platform for celebrities to connect with fans look no further than the just-launched Facebook Fan Box. It is a Facebook widget bands and celebrities like Lance Armstrong can place directly on their own Websites which show their Facebook status updates, how many fans they have on Facebook, an d a”Become a Fan” button which makes you a fan through Facebook Connect. The Kings of Leon have a Facebook Fan Box on their Website.

Bands and celebrities are becoming wary of managing their relationships with fans on sites like MySpace and Facebook. Just the contact information alone is invaluable for most bands. Their online fans are their marketing armies, and smart celebrities want to control those relationships and the entire experience. The Facebook Fan Box lets them use Facebook’s ubiquitous sign-in and stream, while drawing fans to their own sites where they can centralize their online presence.

You know, we were cruisin’ the blogosphere the other day on our tricked out Eee PC, rocking our newly installed trackball, when we realized that we were enjoying ourselves so much that we had completely lost track of the time — and the way that news moves around here, that’s a very dangerous thing. Like, what if @spencerpratt got to the bottom of the moon landing hoax or the conspiracy to fluoridate our water and we totally missed the tweet? Well, we can thank our lucky stars that a certain Justblair has already given this some thought. With little more than an AtMel AtTiny45 microprocessor, a red / green / blue LED, and some programming chops, this guy has rigged a netbook with a little light that notifies the user when they get a new message in Thunderbird, Pidgin or Twitter. This is definitely not a project for beginners, but if you’d like to take a crack at it hit the read link for the whole low down. As for us, it’s back to Loose Change: the Blooper Reel on Google Video.

[Via Liliputing]

Filed under: Laptops

Modder adds Twitter / IRC / email LED to Eee PC, lives to tell the tale originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 08 Jul 2009 15:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Dongles. In-line adapters. Proprietary headset ports. If it’s an audio port on a mobile handset and it’s not 3.5mm, it’s junk. As we declared back in May, we’re done with all of it.

Now HTC, sire of the T-Mobile G1, myTouch, and countless other smartphones plagued by non-3.5mm jacks, is done with it too.

With so much being said about Google’s new Chrome OS being a direct attack on Microsoft, naturally some of the gaze is now going to shift towards what it means for Apple, which makes the second most popular OS in the world. Here’s what it means — For its products, very, very little. For its board of directors, potentially a lot more.

While some have already talked about this a bit, I think main points have been missed. First, the obvious point: When Chrome OS launches next year it will be aimed directly at a market Apple is not in: Netbooks. Yes, Apple is likely to launch a tablet computer of some kind in the future, maybe next year, but that is not a netbook. That will be a touchscreen device that will undoubtedly run some kind of special flavor of the iPhone OS or OS X or a combination of the two. And I would bet that it will have stand-alone apps like the iPhone. That is not what Chrome OS is about.

It’s true that everything really is more colossal in Texas, but unfortunately, it seems as if the planet’s largest wind farm won’t be adding to the collection. Just over a year after energy baron T. Boone Pickens announced plans to plant 687 gigantic wind turbines in Texas’ panhandle, he’s now scraping those intentions and actively looking for a new location to energize. The problem lies in the difficulty of getting 4,000 megawatts of power from Texas to the power distribution system, and now he’s being forced to find a massive plot of land that’s closer to said channels. There’s no word yet on where Mr. Pickens is looking, but considering that even his garage isn’t large enough to house the turbines (which have already been ordered, mind you), we’d guess that he’ll settle on a new tract in short order.

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

T. Boone Pickens scouting new home for $2 billion wind farm originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 08 Jul 2009 15:04:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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