Archive for October, 2009

Tired of all the DROID talk? Well, tough cookies, mister. Nilay, Paul and Josh have a lot to say on the subject, and you’re just going to have to sit there and take it. Or you could skip the first 40 minutes of this week’s podcast, but that’s just a recipe for regret. If you do stick it out you’ll be treated to some unusually candid discussion of Josh’s facial hair and other more pertinent questions picked from the USTREAM discussion that will almost certainly frighten you straight.

WARNING: This podcast has been known to kill people. Engadget assumes no responsibility for injury or death.

[Thanks, JS and Rom for the image]

Hosts: Joshua Topolsky, Nilay Patel, Paul Miller
Producer: Trent Wolbe
Song: ChangWang2003 – 99 Problems (Battletoads Remix)

Hear the podcast

00:01:28 – Motorola DROID review
00:19:08 – HTC confirmed to be cooking up Android 2.0 update for Hero, other devices unclear
00:19:19 – Android 2.0 ported to original T-Mobile G1 (video)
00:19:29 – HTC Droid Eris peeks its head out once more, shows off 5MP camera
00:30:48 – Google Navigation video hands-on: you want this
00:32:25 – The game has changed
00:37:18 – How-to: hack your own DROID dock with magnets and cardboard
00:41:20 – Storm2 now available from Verizon for those who waited
00:49:25 – Nintendo DSi LL goes large in Japan on November 21 (update: DSi XL in Europe Q1)
00:53:41 – Netflix for PlayStation 3 requires a disc, software solution coming late 2010
00:57:28 – Apple TV 3.0 software update is out, with iTunes Extras, LP & Genius in tow
01:06:23 – Nokia vs. Apple: the in-depth analysis
01:06:40 – How-to: recycle your old gadgets

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Twitter: @joshuatopolsky @futurepaul @reckless @engadget

Filed under: Podcasts

Engadget Podcast 169 – 10.31.2009 originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 31 Oct 2009 16:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Whoa, is that webOS 2.0 we see on the horizon? No, sorry, it definitely isn’t — but we can say with relative confidence that the upcoming Pixi will be shipping with a newer, slightly more feature-rich version of webOS than its Pre brethren around the world; if nothing else, Synergy supports Yahoo on the new model, as PreCentral observes. What remains to be seen is the exact version number that’ll be shipping out of the gate — recent DSLReports user agent logs suggest that 1.2.9 might be the gold build (for the record, the Sprint Pre currently rocks 1.2.1), but apparently there’s some chatter going on about a 1.3 as well. Doesn’t seem like much of a difference, but a 0.1 increment usually means more features, fixes, and changes than a 0.01 increment does, so naturally, we’re pulling for a bigger number. There isn’t any intel on what this mythical 1.3 might contain just yet or whether it’d be heading to Bell, Sprint, and O2 Pres, but we’ll keep an eye out.

Filed under: Cellphones

Palm Pixi definitely shipping with a new webOS version, but which? originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 31 Oct 2009 14:44:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Like it or not, we’ve got it on pretty reasonable authority that HTC’s first “DROID” phone is nothing more than a rebadged, shape-shifted Hero (something we’ve been hearing for a while now), and that it’ll be launching on Verizon on November 6th, the same day as Motorola’s DROID. That means Android 1.5 “Cupcake,” Sense UI, 3.2-inch screen, 528MHz processor and so forth. The Eris will retail for $199 but with a $100 mail-in rebate. It’ll pack in an 8GB microSD card and the hopes and dreams of a generation of cheapskates that will be hopin’ and prayin’ that HTC manages to push Android 2.0 onto this thing so they don’t look too bad in front of their DROID-toting buddies on Verizon.

[Thanks, anonymous]

Filed under: Cellphones

Leaked docs show HTC’s DROID Eris launching on November 6th for $99, running Android 1.5 originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 31 Oct 2009 13:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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BOO! It’s Halloween and it’s also a Saturday, so let’s not hear any pathetic excuses for not carving pumpkins. While we’re no experts, we’ve got a few tips for making your jack-o’-lanterns better looking and more unique:

• Always mark where you’re carving first instead of freestyling, especially for the lid. Once the knife’s in there’s nothing you can do about it.
• Want an accurate carving? Draw or print your pattern on paper first and then stick it on the pumpkin, so that you can use a pin to punch an outline.
• Use a scalpel. Seriously, it’s so much better than kitchen knives.
• Be creative: consider using a variety of carving depths instead of just cutting out holes. It’s best to start off with the darkest areas so that you know where the threshold is. If it’s too shallow you can always scrape the trench.
• Don’t use candles — they don’t last and aren’t safe for the kids and animals; many LED candles have a convincing flickering glow, so try those. Alternatively, why not convert a cheap solar garden light into a lid for your jack-o’-lantern? Or go Ben-Heck and try the Cylon mod?
• Keep the seeds for roasting — they make a good snack.

Feel free to refer to our gallery for the whole process. Enjoy and have a happy Halloween!

Filed under: Household

How-to: geek up your pumpkin originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 31 Oct 2009 11:03:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Surface? What Surface? Ideum, which popped out a rather gigantic MT2 multitouch table earlier this year, is now introducing another model that makes that fellow look like child’s play. The 100-inch MT-50 is an outright beast, boasting 86 viewable inches, a 16 x 5 aspect ratio and a stunning 2,304 x 800 resolution. It was engineered for the Space Chase Gallery at the Adventure Science Center, which is one of several high-tech exhibits the company has deployed at the Nashville, TN-based science center. The table itself can support over 50 simultaneous touch points, and while the Flash-based software is obviously tailored for learning applications, there’s nothing stopping this thing from becoming the world’s next great arcade fixture. Hop on past the break for a drool-worthy vid.

Continue reading Ideum’s 100-inch MT-50 multitouch table supports 50 simultaneous touch points (video)

Filed under: Displays, Science

Ideum’s 100-inch MT-50 multitouch table supports 50 simultaneous touch points (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 31 Oct 2009 08:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It belts out severe weather alerts as storms are barreling towards your domicile. It acts as a decent bedroom stereo. And it wakes you and the SO up to your own favorite jams — all while charging your iPod or iPhone throughout the night. If those amenities sound like must-haves in your own life, you might be interested in knowing that iLuv’s iMM183 dual dock alarm clock is now shipping, nearly a full year after being originally announced at CES. The pain? $149.99 — but hey, that’s a small price to pay to keep your dear media player / handset out of a tornado’s eye, right?

Filed under: Home Entertainment, Portable Audio, Portable Video

iLuv ships weather-watching iMM183 dual dock iPod / iPhone alarm clock originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 31 Oct 2009 06:35:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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What could be a better feeling than beating a world record? Beating your own world record. The Tesla Roadster has put an extra exclamation mark on its world-conquering single-charge antics by raising the bar from 241 miles back in April to an even more impressive 313 this week. As you can see in that homemade “world record” sign above, that’s 501 kilometers in metric terms, or pretty much the exact distance between Paris and Amsterdam. The Global Green Challenge in Australia — where this feat was achieved — allows only production battery-powered vehicles to compete, meaning that the new record is down to driver skill on the part of one Mr. Simon Hackett, and not some newfound techno mojo. Kinda makes those long recharge times seem like less of a burden, no?

Tesla Roadster keeps on rollin’, goes 313 miles on single charge originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 31 Oct 2009 03:47:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The fine folks at both HotHardware and PC Perspective have run the new ASUS P7P55D-E Premium motherboard through its paces, which has the particular distinction of handling both USB 3.0 and the up-and-coming SATA 6G through controllers by NEC and Marvell, respectively. Lucky for us, both sites’ tests came to similar conclusions. The Seagate Barracuda XT SATA 6G drive has almost zero improvement over SATA 3G, other than in some burst speeds due to the fancy cache on the 6G — the bottleneck here is the drive, not the controller. Meanwhile, USB 3.0 has speeds that are roughly 5 to 6 times faster than USB 2.0 with the same drive, a huge win for fans of external storage the world over. Perhaps even better news is that an ASUS US36 controller card with USB 3.0 and SATA 6G support is a mere $30, so this stuff is already basically within reach to the average desktop user.

Read – HotHardware
Read – PC Perspective

Filed under: Desktops, Peripherals, Storage

USB 3.0 and SATA 6G put to good use: benchmarks originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 31 Oct 2009 01:26:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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For the most part, we’d say that Sony addressed the concerns of many when it introduced the PlayStation 3 Slim. The console was smaller, cheaper and easier on the eyes, and of course the 120GB hard drive didn’t hurt matters either. That said, we know that the redesign didn’t please everyone, and we’ve heard more than a few PS3 diehards complain about the new design. If it were you designing a newer, less expensive PlayStation 3, what would you have done differently? Kept PS2 backwards compatibility? Colored it white? Added HD DVD support? Don’t be scared to get a little crazy — besides, they call that “innovation” in the corporate world.

Filed under: Gaming

How would you change Sony’s PlayStation 3 Slim? originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 30 Oct 2009 23:43:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The best of the rest from the physics arXiv this week

The First Accurate Parallax Distance to a Black Hole

A Cooper Pair Light Emitting Diode

Evidence of Minoan Astronomy and Calendrical Practices

Artificial Immune Systems

The Cyborg Astrobiologist: Testing a Novelty-Detection Algorithm on Two Mobile Exploration Systems at Rivas Vaciamadrid in Spain and at the Mars Desert Research Station in Utah