Archive for November 21st, 2009

Hey Windows users: what would you risk for a mouse of such mystical persuasions that it has the word “magic” right in the product name? How about $69 for the mouse followed by a few sleepless nights after installing a .exe found in the murky shallows of the internet? That’s what it’ll take to install some hacked drivers, said to enable Apple’s Magic Mouse gestures, on your Windows rig. The drivers were extracted from the latest Bluetooth update targeting Mac owners running Windows under Boot Camp, but now there’s nothing stopping you from trying them too. Let us know how this dark elixir works out in the comments below.

Windows drivers for Apple’s Magic Mouse conjured from the ether originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 21 Nov 2009 16:53:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Gizmodo  |  Uneasy Silence, 32-bit download, 64-bit download  | Email this | Comments

Man, the loot you can uncover when you go snooping around spec pages. That most ambitious of Sony Ericsson projects, the XPERIA X10, is still a long way from being released, but already we can narrow down the list of potential US carriers to just one: AT&T. The guys over at Phandroid were the first to spot the newly added UMTS frequency specs for the phone, and the available 800/850/1900/2100 bands fit only AT&T’s 3G network. That’s gonna be a bitter pill to swallow if you were looking for something like (or better than) an iPhone, but were put off by the wireless provider. Then again, with pre-order prices for unlocked X10s showing up at $999 in some places, maybe you can just look at our lukewarm hands-on and convince yourself this phone ain’t worth it anyway. Go on, you know denial makes sense.

[Thanks, Berto]

Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 heading to AT&T originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 21 Nov 2009 16:42:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Phandroid  |  Sony Ericsson  | Email this | Comments

We’ve just been alerted to an unsettling trend in Palm Pre land, where strings of replacement devices are a bit too common for comfort: some users have been losing their Palm Profile backup, or a large majority of it, once they pair up their new device. The big issue is that since this problem is rather sporadic, Palm doesn’t seem to have a good way to deal with it yet — the trend in the forums seems to be a complaint sent to Palm, followed up by word of an inability to restore data from Palm a few weeks later. Lucky for these hapless Pre replacers, a particularly repeat offender (working on his seventh Pre) has posted instructions for making sure this sort of data loss doesn’t happen to you. His theory is that it has something to do with a refurbished device loaded with an old firmware trying to sync with the newer-firmware-styled backup your dead device made with Palm’s servers, and messing stuff up in the process. He recommends walking out of the store before Sprint tries to trip you up, and upgrading and wiping the phone before reactivating it and syncing. Sounds foolproof enough, right? Let’s hope.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

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Palm Pre backups can be easily overwritten by a replacement device: replacers beware! originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 21 Nov 2009 15:44:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  PreCentral (instructions), PreCentral (failure thread)  | Email this | Comments

It’s a wild land of imagination over at Wired and Condé Nast these days. The pair have managed not only to dream up a colorful, animated copy of Wired magazine for the so-far imaginary Apple tablet, but actually whipped up a concept of a Apple tablet to go with it. The Willy Wonka-style pairing are being shown off at the Wired Store in New York, and go along with word the other day that Condé Nast was taking the development of “iTablet” versions of its publications very seriously. Perhaps a bit too seriously? We’re not ones to judge. Video of the tablet is after the break.

Continue reading Wired shows off an Apple tablet-formatted copy of Wired on a fake Apple tablet

Wired shows off an Apple tablet-formatted copy of Wired on a fake Apple tablet originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 21 Nov 2009 14:05:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Gizmodo  |  Wired  | Email this | Comments

It’s somewhat hard to believe that we’re already talking about Windows 8 given that Windows 7 just hit the shelves two months ago, but you know the engineers at Microsoft are already planning ahead. According to a roadmap constructed over at Microsoft Kitchen — based around whispers heard through the grapevine on the eventual release of the next Windows Server — the next iteration of Windows is tentatively pegged for release in the year 2012. Of course, a three-year window between Windows 7 and the next version is totally believable, but we wouldn’t go planning your end of the world party with the assumption that a new OS will be the main attraction. Or you could, but then you might be disappointed, which would be a sucky way to go out.

Microsoft roadmap pegs Windows 8 release for 2012, or just after the world’s end originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 21 Nov 2009 12:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Electronista  |  Microsoft Kitchen  | Email this | Comments

Right on schedule, the latest BlackBerry to grace the Verizon’s CDMA spectrum, the Curve 8530, is now on sale. A 2.5-inch display, OS 5.0, a 3.5mm headphone jack, and yes, WiFi — take that, Tour. Price is $199.99 on two-year contract, with an added $100 discount if you buy it online. Let’s be honest, what else were you gonna spend that money on tonight, hm?

Filed under: Cellphones

BlackBerry Curve 8530 now putting Verizon through the rounds originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 21 Nov 2009 10:12:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Verizon Wireless  | Email this | Comments

Word on the street — and by that we mean Reuters — is that Tesla‘s looking to go public with the company “any day.” The luxury electric car make, whose Roadster still goes for a cool $109,000, would be the first US auto company to offer an IPO since Ford way back in 1956, says MSNBC. Quite a notable event, indeed, but earlier comments by Tesla investors (via Autoblog Green) suggest “any day now” might be any time between now and September 2010.

Filed under: Transportation

Tesla Motors IPO coming ‘any day’ now, says report originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 21 Nov 2009 07:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Autoblog  |  Reuters, MSNBC  | Email this | Comments

Sony’s latest professional-grade camcorder probably meets your needs and then some by quite a stretch, recording AVCHD up to 24Mbps and SD quality in MPEG-2 / 9Mbps. We’re also looking at a 20x zoom lens, 3 x 1/3-inch Exmor CMOS sensor, and storage options including Memory Stick Pro Duo and an optional 128GB flash memory drive. Don’t lie, you want this beast, even if it clearly falls in the “if you have to ask, you can’t afford it” category. Look for more temptation sometime closer to its expected early 2010 launch.

Filed under: Digital Cameras

New Sony NXCAM is more camcorder than you ever need, but still you covet originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 21 Nov 2009 04:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Sony, Akihabara News  | Email this | Comments

You read that right. Sony’s PlayStation 2, which the great majority of the world has been enjoying since 2000, is just now officially touching ground in Brazil. We’re pretty sure it’s been making its way into the country for many years by not-so-official means, but if you’ve gone the legit route, last-generation’s game console king can be yours for just 799 Brazilian Real, which we’re sad to say translates to about $461 in US currency. Yeah, we’re expecting this to just fly off the shelves.

Filed under: Gaming

PlayStation 2 finally launches in Brazil for the bargain price of around US $462 originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 21 Nov 2009 01:41:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Joystiq  | Email this | Comments

The best of the rest from the physics arXiv this week:

Hydrodynamics of Catheter Biofilm Formation

Asymptotically Safe Inflation

Peak-Dip-Hump from Holographic Superconductivity

Single-Photon Imaging and Efficient Coupling to Single Plasmons

Electromagnetic Nature of Dark Energy

Searching for Better Plasmonic Materials