RIM Blazes Into Smartphone Market With New Torches, New Bolds

Research In Motion announced five new smartphones based on its new BlackBerry 7 operating system on Wednesday. AT&T, Sprint and U.S. Cellular will all get new devices that maintain some of the feel of earlier products while offering functionality competitive with the leading smartphones on the market.

Source: http://www.technewsworld.com/rsstory/73000.html

Franziska Spanier Erna Van den Hout Laura Pauli Janna Löhnig

Qbo music player robot responds to hand gestures, challenges DJ Roomba to a dance-off (video)

What's a good way to impress your friends? With a robot boom box that responds to your every hand movement, that's how. Meet Qbo, TheCorpora's open-source Linux robot who we've gotten to know over the years, even through his awkward phase. Nowadays, this full grown cutie has stereoscopic "eyes" and a face-identifying system that's capable of learning, recognizing faces, and responding. With his new hand gesture recognition skills, Qbo will start playing music the moment you hold up a fist. Putting your hand out in a "halt" position stops the song and pointing left or right jumps to different tracks in your playlist. Giving Qbo the peace sign increases the volume (yeah, seriously!), while pointing the peace sign down tells him to take it down a few notches. The ultimate party mate and wing man is even so kind as to announce the name and title of the track. The video after the break best explains what hanging with this fellow is like, but if you're keen on textual explanations, just imagine yourself awkwardly doing the robot to control your stereo. Go on, we won't look.

Continue reading Qbo music player robot responds to hand gestures, challenges DJ Roomba to a dance-off (video)

Qbo music player robot responds to hand gestures, challenges DJ Roomba to a dance-off (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 04 Aug 2011 06:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink PlasticPals  |  sourceTheCorpora Blog  | Email this | Comments


Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/QPWvgPctKE4/

Jörn Domenighini Marion Dallmeyer Hanna Wohlrab Henrik Brenner

Adblock Plus developer pokes holes in Mozilla's new add-on performance tests

Wladimir Palant, developer of the most popular add-on in the world, Adblock Plus, is also an active contributor to the Planet Mozilla blog community. Over the last few days, in response to Mozilla's new name and shame list of slow add-ons, Palant has been investigating whether Mozilla's testing methods are actually accurate.

Rather surprisingly, it turns out that Mozilla's numbers could be significantly wrong -- and if they're not wrong, the factors that Mozilla uses to tabulate an add-ons final score should definitely be made more transparent.

In the first set of tests, Palant shows that FlashGot's position in the top 10 is probably due to a fault in Mozilla's testing setup, and that add-ons can perform very differently depending on which operating system they're being tested on. In the second analysis, Palant uncovers an irregularity that doesn't seem to have an obvious cause -- but it could be due to an I/O bottleneck on Mozilla's test machines. Basically, even though performance testing of Read It Later is disabled because of a bug, it still (somehow!) manages to record a 14% slow-down on Windows 7.

Palant concludes both analyses by scolding Mozilla for going public with the performance data before its testing methods had been confirmed accurate. It definitely looks like Mozilla has been more than a little reckless, considering the importance of Firefox's add-on ecosystem.

Adblock Plus developer pokes holes in Mozilla's new add-on performance tests originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 08 Apr 2011 05:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/04/08/adblock-plus-developer-pokes-holes-in-mozillas-new-add-on-perfo/

Ulrike Kellner Nicola Kohnen Laura Ungricht Edith Berner

Pastebin updated to V3, releases Windows app

pastebin
Pastebin is a very popular website aimed at coders and other nerdy types, which allows them (or should I say, us) to paste and share snippets of code with lovely syntax highlighting.

It has recently undergone a major overhaul which includes the release of a brand new Windows client. The new client lets you create new "pastes" and manage your existing ones. It joins a host of other tools from Pastebin, such as the Google and Chrome extensions, OS X widget and the mobile apps.

If you're currently using Pastebin, the new client is a great addition. And if you haven't tried it before, next time you have a piece of code you want to share or get some feedback on, you could do worse than try out Pastebin.

[Thanks, Jeroen!]

Pastebin updated to V3, releases Windows app originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 04 Mar 2011 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/03/04/pastebin-updated-to-v3-releases-windows-app/

Margarethe Lachner Lutz Yalcin Birte Höß Kerstin Klos

ASUS' next gen Eee Pad Transformer to pack NVIDIA's quad-core Kal-El, launch this October?

Fan of ASUS' affordable, yet competitively specced Eee Pad Transformer, but still haven't committed your credit to its 10.1-inches? Well, if this bout of rumor-mongering proves true, you might want to put the wallet down until early fall. Harbinger of supply chain gossip Digitimes is reporting that the electronics maker has just enlisted Wintek to provide touch panels for its next gen tablet, slated to launch this October. The parts supplier is said to be working in tandem with HannStar Display to ramp up production should this iteration be met with its predecessor's unforeseen popularity. Adding more ambiguity to the speculative fire, ASUS' Chairman Jonney Shih recently confirmed to Forbes that an updated Transformer is on its way, saying only that it'd be very "impressive," and would be available before CES. Jonney didn't comment on the upcoming slate's supposed use of NVIDIA's quad-core Kal-El, but with the chip's promised August launch date, we wouldn't rule it out. While talks of a Transformer 2 are still just gossamer promise, you can always snag that Eee Pad Slider while you sit and wait.

ASUS' next gen Eee Pad Transformer to pack NVIDIA's quad-core Kal-El, launch this October? originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 02 Aug 2011 21:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink TechDigest  |  sourceForbes, Digitimes  | Email this | Comments

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/08/02/asus-next-gen-eee-pad-transformer-to-pack-nvidias-quad-core-ka/

Moritz Beller Gabriela Prell

Interlocked is a three-dimensional brain teaser

interlocked
Back when I was a kid, I used to love crafting ornate puzzle boxes out of Lego. There would be just one way to open the box, by carefully shifting and rotating a bunch of pieces. Well, either that, or breaking the box in frustration.

Interlocked takes that spirit and turns it into a beautiful Flash game. It's a good thing the soundtrack is soothing, because the game itself can get pretty frustrating.

At the start of each level, you're presented with a box built out of blocks in different colors. You can click and drag the mouse to rotate the box any which way. Once you decide you want to shift a part of the box, hit SPACE to switch into "move" mode. You can then click any part of the box and drag it. Of course, you can only move a part as long as nothing is in its way. So it becomes a matter of understanding how the box is built, and what parts you need to move around so you could eventually take the box apart.

It's a tricky, difficult game, but it's a great brain teaser -- and definitely a keeper.

Interlocked is a three-dimensional brain teaser originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 29 Mar 2011 17:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/03/29/interlocked-is-a-three-dimensional-brain-teaser/

Angelika Frey Mika Bernhardt Ingeburg Liebermann Elsa Alexander Furtmann

Win a Gateway LT2805u Netbook!

We have a great contest that is just in time for back to school. The generous folks at Office Depot are giving one lucky Gadgeteer reader a Gateway LT2805u Netbook ($279.99)! Get noticed with the new Gateway LT2805u netbook with superior Intel® Atom? dual-core processing. This sleek and slim system weighs only 2.31 pounds and [...]

Source: http://the-gadgeteer.com/2011/08/01/win-a-gateway-lt2805u-netbook/

Henrik Brenner Karla Reusch Wilhelm Klassen Nathalie Füllgraf

Archaeologists Now Use Kinect to Build 3-D Models During Digs [Kinect]

University of California, San Diego students will be going to Jordan soon to take part in an archaeological dig that's decidely futuristic: As they uncover artifacts and structures in the soil, they'll be using high-quality 3-D scanning to record accurate positional details—rich data that could be incredibly useful in the future. More »


Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/z6Pf6SUER9g/archaeologists-now-use-kinect-to-build-3+d-models-during-digs

Benjamin Schötz Johannes Liebl Arne Koller Fiona Brandenburg

Blackberry Playbook will run Android apps by 'late fall,' later than expected

RIM previously announced that its Playbook tablet would be able to run Android apps by the summer, but we've just heard something to the contrary. A reliable source told us that this highly anticipated feature of the Blackberry slate now won't arrive until "late fall." With RIM struggling against ever-stronger competition, delays like this are bad news -- the Playbook needs this new lease of Android life as soon as possible.

Blackberry Playbook will run Android apps by 'late fall,' later than expected originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Aug 2011 08:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/08/03/blackberry-playbook-will-run-android-apps-by-late-fall-later/

Benjamin Schötz Johannes Liebl Arne Koller Fiona Brandenburg