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The good news first: Adobe’s promising Flash 10.1 is going to hit smartphones—Android, WebOS, Windows Mobile—and desktops in the “first half” of this year, a slightly less squishy date. And it’ll come over the air. The bad part? The “over the air” thing is also kind of “up in the air” as to what that…
The vision of ebooks Google has presented to publishers: allowing people to print copies, cut and paste portions, and paying publishers 63 percent of the revenue. The vision the publishers presented in return: Go eff yourself. https://gizmodo.com/massive-google-editions-ebook-store-pushed-back-until-n-5382439 That’s right, Google’s finally getting around to opening an ebook store too—called Google Editions, and it’s been in…
Click to viewSure, Google’s Superbowl ad was cute and left us giggling, but how would a French romance powered by Google really go? [UCB—Thanks, Mackenzie!] https://gizmodo.com/googles-superbowl-ad-has-google-ceo-eric-schmidt-all-at-5465890
Apple’s hiring again and this time they’re looking for “Performance QA Engineers” in their “iPad Media” department. Based on the description for the job, we might be seeing an increase in iPad camera rumors: The Media Systems team is looking for a software quality engineer with a strong technical background to test still, video and…
I hate spiders, I hate horror movies, and I hate gimmicky computer cases. But I love the commercial for the Lian Li Mini-atx case. Maybe it’s just because it reminded me of Steve Irwin. There aren’t details on availability and pricing for this case, but who cares when the promo video alone is fun. [CrunchGear]
Some folks decided to study the calling habits of 5.3 million people over an 18-month period. 350 million phone calls later, they came to an almost obvious conclusion: Prepaid cellphone users make and return fewer calls than their postpaid counterparts. You can click on the image to take a closer look at the graphs. Initially…
The upcoming i5 MacBook Pro refresh might be closer than we thought, with TUAW discovering that Best Buy emptied their systems of the current version. Since they’re not likely to go MacBook-less for long, that points to soon. [TUAW] https://gizmodo.com/intel-promotion-leaks-core-i5-macbook-pro-update-5447089
This concept scale that doubles as a decorative rug might—might—be the thing to finally get me taking better care of myself. Designer Kwan Sunman’s Rug With Scale project does away with the cold, judgmental form factors of your average bathroom scale, ensconcing it instead in a warm and inviting rug. The readout from the scale…
Google’s two new announcements: integrating a Twitter-like service into Gmail and a goal of a real-time speech translation service shows what direction they’re taking the company: Into the space between you and every other human being on the planet. https://gizmodo.com/gmail-is-the-new-twitfaceplurk-5466938 To be fair, these two developments are really far apart in their delivery dates. The…
See this wall of colorful squares? It’s actually a concept design consisting of a bunch of small triangular panels which can be spun ’round on whim to change the way your room looks. Or to spell out naughty things. Ok, so the concept photos only spell out “S-E-X” which won’t make too many people giggle…
After upgrading to Windows 7, some users saw a new warning message suggesting that they need to replace their laptops’ batteries. Some screamed “bug,” some shouted “conspiracy,’ but Microsoft denies that anything’s wrong. In an entry on Microsoft’s MSDN blog, Windows division President Steven Sinofsky explains that the warning message is a new feature in…
For a 20% savings, more than 50% cable and satellite subscribers are likely to jump ship to save money. But Telco TV (services like AT&T U-verse) have a much, much more loyal following. Anecdotally, would you agree? [Multiplayblog via engadgetHD] https://gizmodo.com/the-future-of-tv-according-to-at-t-5022574
Black Hawk Safety Net, an online hacker training resource with 12,000 paying members and another 170,000 free members, was brought down recently by Chinese authorities. Only three operators of the site were arrested, while the official site itself, 3800hk.com, was put out of commission when the company’s 9 servers were seized. The site provided resources…
In today’s Remainders: tricks of all sorts. Wisair cuts some cords with their wireless display adapters; Netflix warns the FCC of potential loopholes in the Comcast/NBC merger; the inimitable BrussPup plays with our heads (and ping pong balls); and more. Air Ball I’m all for eliminating cords and wires whenever possible, so I was excited…
I love little birds. They are so cute. And they taste delicious and crunchy fried in beer batter. If you want them to wake you up, however, try BirdBox. BirdBox is a $12.75 bedside bird home with a matching free application that turns your iPhone or iPod touch into a cuckoo alarm clock. You know,…
I like this idea by Matt Brown: He tags 45rpm vinyl records with RFID stickers to play songs in a turntable that doesn’t turn at all. Inside the fake player he placed an RFID reader, which gets the information from the RFID-tagged record. Once it detects it—and the user moves the tonearm into position—the record…
If you want a laptop with graphics and battery performance that isn’t totally embarrassing, you’re basically stuck with some combination of Intel and Nvidia gear. Now, finally, AMD’s Llano, a CPU/GPU combo, or “APU”, could give us a serious alternative. AMD running with the “Application Processor Unit” name for the guts of their Fusion processors…
We knew that the Droid’s Android 2.1 update is on its way, but apparently we won’t be waiting long: According to Motorola’s official Facebook page, it’s “happy to relay the 2.1 upgrade to Droid will start to roll out this week.” [Engadget] https://gizmodo.com/droids-android-2-1-update-full-of-multitouch-and-some-5466971
JDS Architects thought that this trampoline net spiral—which would allow people to bounce from the top floor to the bottom of the Guggenheim Museum rotunda—could be the funniest thing ever. I completely agree. And so do ambulance-chasing lawyers. Unfortunately—or fortunately for the people who may have broken their necks—it is just a concept, part of…
It will no longer cost you more to cancel a Nexus One contract than it does to buy a Nexus One. But Google’s still imposing a $150 “equipment recovery fee” on top of T-Mobile’s $200 ETF. https://gizmodo.com/canceling-a-nexus-one-contract-costs-more-than-a-nexus-5446146 The change comes on the heels of an FCC inquiry into out-of-control termination fees. Up until now, Nexus…
