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The fixes are minor, but if you’ve been having issues connecting to Wi-Fi, watching videos or dealing with single-page PDFs, the latest iPad firmware 3.2.1 update is for you. Also, how geeky cool is it that the update counts down 321? This is a once-in-a-lifetime firmware moment, folks. Enjoy it. [TUAW]
The race to buy Palm earlier this year was fast and hot, with the company’s bankers contacting 16 companies about the deal, including five serious potential suitors. HP won the bake-off, acquiring Palm for $1.2 billion in late April. But other companies involved in the talks included Silicon Valley’s increasingly competitive rivals, Apple and Google,…
I thought this Amazon page was fake… until I searched for it and found the product page for the Fleshlight. Now, I believe. https://gizmodo.com/i-had-sex-with-furniture-the-shameful-nsfw-fleshligh-5375323 The Amazon page for the FleshLight Male Masturbator shows—among a variety of lubricants and anal accessories—Fallout 3, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Game of the Year Edition, Command and Conquer the…
We’ve got the Droid X here for $50 less than Verizon, so if you still want one after reading about its software problems, dive in. And don’t forget to browse the rest of the deals while you’re at it. https://gizmodo.com/motorola-droid-x-review-5587225 Top Deals: • 14″ Dell Inspiron 14z Laptop with Intel Core 2 Duo SU7300 1.3GHz…
Earlier this week, workers excavating the site of the future World Trade Center unearthed an ancient wooden plank. Then another. Then an entire row, comprising what remains of a 30-foot long wood-hulled vessel, over 200 years old. It’s the biggest find of its kind since 1982, when an 18th-century cargo ship was discovered on Water…
Mike Arrington has a post over at TechCrunch taking Consumer Reports to task over their iPhone 4 coverage. And it’s true! It feels like there’s a new Consumer Reports update every day that either repeats or directly contradicts the previous day’s. It’s well worth a read to see it all laid out like this, especially…
At this point, we’ve seen all sorts of crazy ideas for fixing the iPhone 4’s antenna problems, from strapping it with a rubberband to covering it with nail polish. Steve Wozniak’s solution: just carry another phone. https://gizmodo.com/the-best-semi-solutions-for-iphone-4-reception-problems-5573179 In an interview with a Dutch reporter, Woz described his own iPhone 4 antenna woes at length: Henk…
Here’s the first full-length trailer for The Social Network, David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin’s movie about the creation of social wonder/ill, the Facebook. Thanks largely to a brilliant song choice, the trailer is eerily evocative. That’s the Vega Scala Choir’s rendition of Radiohead’s “Creep,” and when coupled with sad, lonely images of people reaching out…
Paul Priestman, designer of Britain’s widely-used Virgin Pendolino train cars, thinks his country is in need of a new transportation icon, one that upholds the legacy of the Rolls Royce and the Concorde. His vision? The double-decker Mercury train. Priestman is determined to convince Britain that a high-speed, high-tech train like the Mercury is key…
If someone you know would be daunted by an instruction to “just use Handbrake,” Elgato’s new Turbo.264 HD software makes it dead easy to convert video files from camcorders and computers for playback on iPads and iPhones and the rest. https://lifehacker.com/optimized-handbrake-presets-to-encode-video-for-your-ne-5572037 Sure, you probably know how to get that video you just shot all nice…
How Google decides what sites come up first on any given search is a closely-guarded secret, a formula that changes regularly to keep people from gaming the system. But it may get a lot harder to predict. A new patent filed by Google on Tuesday would allow Google to analyze information about where on a…
AppleInsider has posted an open letter to Steve Jobs by New York Senator Charles Schumer (D). The letter strongly criticizes the iPhone 4’s antenna problem. We have confirmed that the letter is real, and it’ll be officially published soon: https://gizmodo.com/wireless-expert-on-iphone-4-antenna-we-got-a-problem-5576839 July 15, 2010 Dear Mr. Jobs, I write to express concern regarding the reception problem…
Apple’s FaceTime video chat is great and all, but being accessible only to iPhone 4 owners limits its usefulness. There’s a solution on the way, though, according to BGR, that’ll bring FaceTime to the iPad, iPod Touch, and possibly Macs. https://gizmodo.com/test-notes-facetime-5572045 It makes sense that Apple would want to expand FaceTime across its family of…
Scientists have discovered the first cometary planet, one with a huge tail, a stream of gas being ripped off by solar winds at 22,000 miles per hour. This jovian world is located 153 light-years from Earth. The planet—called HD 209458b—orbits 100 times closer to its home star than our Jovian neighbor, traveling in an astonishingly…
According to Bloomberg, one of Apple’s senior engineers raised concerns a year ago over the potential for the iPhone 4’s design to cause dropped calls. Ruben Caballero, an antenna expert at Apple who worked on the device, spoke with management last year about his belief that the iPhone 4’s design could cause reception troubles, according…
We don’t really like the Droid X as a phone, but that part barely matters now. You probably shouldn’t buy the phone because doing so supports something very wrong—something anti-customer and anti-innovation—that Motorola is doing. UPDATE https://gizmodo.com/motorola-droid-x-review-5587225 According to a forum of Android modders, as pointed out by MobileCrunch, the Droid X is locked down…
See that beautiful model there, frolicking with a few of her friends? No? Well, your smartphone can. This billboard—and two others like it—is one giant QR code that in this case gives particular significance to augmented reality. Calvin Klein has occupied that particular billboard space, over a prominent corner on Houston Street, for quite some…
There’s no special engineering going on here, just an Andriod app and an extreme case of cleverness. If you own a Samsung Galaxy S, you can download Samsung’s custom Android app called Road SMS. It’s a simple text messaging program, but instead of the dull metallic backdrop of your average mobile OS, Road SMS pipes…
HP’s original vision: tablets of every OS flavor, led by the (since deceased) Windows 7 Slate but complemented by Android and webOS devices. Today it turns out there can only be one. And it’s not named after dessert. https://gizmodo.com/hp-slate-is-dead-on-arrival-says-techcrunch-5527824 HP’s decision to table their Android tablet—reported by All Things D—shouldn’t come so much as a…
Good old Symbian Series 60 is still around and going (fairly) strong, despite the dual Android/iPhone assault—and has today been brightened up no end by the arrival of a beta release of Opera Mobile 10.1. If you’re still a keen S60 user and haven’t switched to Android in a big sulk over Nokia’s ditching of…