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August 20, 2009
18:57
Tokyo Gundam At Sunset
» ‎ ROBOTS DREAMS

Tags: [edit]

Gundam's still going strong and drawing big crowds next to Tokyo Bay. Photo credit: Yuko -- Posted using the Robots Dreams iPhone.

18:45
SlingPlayer Mobile 1.1 for iPhone picks up App Store approval
» ‎ Engadget

Tags: [edit]

That sweet little update to SlingPlayer Mobile for iPhone that Sling submitted for Apple's perusal about a week and a half ago is now approved and available -- version 1.1, as it were -- bringing native DISH Network navigation, improved widescreen support, and improved response times throughout the app. Separately, Sling has updated us on the 3G-compatible flavor of the app that they've submitted for consideration outside of the US, but so far, no dice -- the company hasn't heard back from Apple, which means it's all WiFi-only for the moment. Wouldn't want to saturate those pricey little 3G cells, now, would we?

[Thanks, James C.]
Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds, Portable Video
SlingPlayer Mobile 1.1 for iPhone picks up App Store approval originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 20 Aug 2009 19:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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18:00
August 21, 2009 - chainsawsuit
» ‎ chainsawsuit by kris straub

Tags: [edit]

18:00
Best Video-Sharing Site? [Hive Five Call For Contenders]
» ‎ Lifehacker

Tags: [edit]

A decade ago sharing high-resolution video over the internet was unheard of. Now we swap video with astounding speed and ever higher quality, thanks to several popular web sites.

Photo by jordan a.m..

This week we want to hear about the service you use to share video. What makes your service of choice so great? Whether it's the interface, the built-in editor, or the lack of size restrictions, we want to know what makes the service stand out.

Hive Five nominations take place in the comments, where you post your favorite tool for the job. We get hundreds of comments, so to make your nomination clear, please include it at the top of your comment like so: VOTE: Video-Sharing Site. Please don't include your vote in a reply to another commenter. Instead, make your vote and reply separate comments. If you don't follow this format, we may not count your vote. To prevent tampering with the results, votes from first-time commenters may not be counted. After you've made your nomination, let us know what makes it stand out from the competition.

About the Hive Five: The Hive Five feature series asks readers to answer the most frequently asked question we get: "Which tool is the best?" Once a week we'll put out a call for contenders looking for the best solution to a certain problem, then YOU tell us your favorite tools to get the job done. Every weekend, we'll report back with the top five recommendations and give you a chance to vote on which is best. For an example, check out last week's Hive Five Best Apartment Search Tools.

18:00
08.21.2009
» ‎ Cyanide & Happiness

Tags: [edit]

17:59
iPhone 3GS totally capable of 1080p video playback
» ‎ Engadget

Tags: [edit]

We always suspected the iPhone 3GS was capable of 1080p HD video playback, and now we've got proof. Although Apple lists the iPhone 3Gs's max video playback res at just 640x480, iLounge linked to Chinese forum post claiming that the 3GS could do 30Mbps 1080p playback earlier today -- and when we saw that the only thing we needed to do to test it out was download the free FileAid app, well, you know how we've just spent the last 20 minutes. We tested out a bunch of HD trailers from Apple's QuickTime trailer site, some videos we shot with a Lumix DMC-GH1 and some other random videos with general success, but there were some major hiccups: high bitrate 720p video off the GH1 stuttered during playback, and loading the Avatar trailer consistently crashed the phone's audio driver until we restarted. We tried the same thing on an iPhone 3G and just got error messages at almost every resolution, so it seems like it's a combination of the 3GS's extra horsepower and different built-in software at work here -- software that's clearly not ready for prime-time, as evidenced by the bugs. We're hoping Apple is polishing that up and getting ready to unlock this functionality, since it'd be sweet to just plug into an HDTV and play video -- anyone listening out there in Cupertino? Video after the break.

Read - Apple iPhone specs
Read - Chinese forum posts claiming 30Mbps 1080p playback
Continue reading iPhone 3GS totally capable of 1080p video playback
Filed under: Cellphones
iPhone 3GS totally capable of 1080p video playback originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 20 Aug 2009 18:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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17:12
Tony Hawk: RIDE's skateboard gets FCC'd, USB dongle required for PS3 and Wii
» ‎ Engadget

Tags: [edit]

We still gotta wait until November 17th to do our own virtual shredding, but for now you can gaze upon the FCC's well-intentioned (but generally pretty bad) gadget photography of the new Tony Hawk: RIDE skateboard, the filing of which just went live in the commission's database. It shouldn't come as a surprise to owners of Activision's other plastic peripherals from the Guitar Hero series, but PlayStation 3 owners will have to use the bundled USB dongle to connect wirelessly to the console -- Wii, too, according to its user manual, as the usual trick of planting a Wii remote inside the controller isn't available here. Sad and ridiculous, but we can't imagine one dangling receiver will be a deal-breaker for many people out there -- unless, of course, you're able to buy the Xbox 360 version instead.

Read - Wii skateboard
Read - Wii dongle
Read - PS3 dongle
Filed under: Gaming
Tony Hawk: RIDE's skateboard gets FCC'd, USB dongle required for PS3 and Wii originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 20 Aug 2009 18:12:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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17:08
Eagle Talon's 3rd Film, New TV Series Green-Lit
» ‎ Anime News Network

Tags: [edit]

Frogman's Flash-animated comedy aims to have 10,000 voice actors in credits

17:05
Dying Hard Drive 911, Yowza!!! Greg Grunberg! Green Drives For Your RAID, Nokia Surge - Tekzilla
» ‎ Tekzilla (High Definition Quicktime)

Enclosure: [download]

Tags: [edit]

Patrick's HD Hits The Freezer, Heroes star Greg Grunberg joins to talk iPhone Development, Veronica Reviews Nokia's Latest,

17:00
Remains of the Day: Is the Music Industry Seriously Still Upset About Lyric Search Edition [For What It's Worth]
» ‎ Lifehacker

Tags: [edit]
Our favorite pop-up-free lyrics site LyricWiki has to shutdown its API because of complaints from music publishers, Mozilla's Bespin gets some nice collaboration features, and Mark Pilgrim helps developers dive into HTML 5.
- The end of free lyrics?
  Much-loved lyrics search engine LyricWiki is forced by publishers to shut down its API, much to the chagrin of developers (including this dabbling developer of MixTape.me). [MacWorld]
- Collaboration in Bespin
  Mozilla Bespin, the previously mentioned web-based text editor, continues its progression, this time with impressive in-browser collaboration. [Joe Walker]
- Brain Is a Co-Conspirator in a Vicious Stress Loop
  Stressing out over the work, the economy, etc? Apparently your brain's not really helping. [NYT]
- Apparently The Safest Browser Is Whoever Is Paying Yahoo The Most
  Yahoo stirs up some dust, recommending the Firefox users try the "New, Safer IE8." [TechCrunch]
- Milk the Cow Dashboard Widget for OS X
  If you're smack dab in the overlapping zone of the Venn diagram of RTM lover and Dashboard lover, this will be good news. [RTM Blog]
- Dive Into HTML 5
  Programmer and writer extraordinaire Mark Pilgrim releases the beginning of his opus on HTML 5 to the web.
- Open Source Textbook Company Now BMOC at 400 Colleges
  We offered our tips for finding your textbooks for free (or cheap), but Wired highlights how open-source textbooks are starting to catch on for students wanting to save money and professors willing to give it a shot. [Wired]
- Study Finds That Online Education Beats the Classroom
  Thinking about getting an education online? One study thinks you may be making the smart choice. [NYT]

16:36
US Army wants 2.3 gigapixel camera for aerial surveillance
» ‎ Engadget

Tags: [edit]

DARPA may have already gone to the trouble of building a 1.8 gigapixel camera as part of its ARGUS-IS project (pictured above), but it looks like the US Army is setting its sights a little higher, and it's now soliciting proposals for a 2.3 gigapixel camera that would be used for some super-wide aerial surveillance. While obviously still quite a ways from becoming reality, the Army hopes the system will be both smaller and lighter than previous systems, work in the infrared range to boot, and capture images at a rate of two frames per second. The key bit, however, is of course that 2.3 gigapixel sensor, which should let the camera provide continuous coverage of a range of about sixty-two square miles at a resolution of 0.3 meters, or just enough to make out the outline of your tinfoil hat.
Filed under: Digital Cameras
US Army wants 2.3 gigapixel camera for aerial surveillance originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 20 Aug 2009 17:36:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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16:05
Dying Hard Drive 911, Yowza!!! Greg Grunberg! Green Drives For Your RAID, Nokia Surge - Tekzilla
» ‎ Tekzilla (High Definition Quicktime)

Enclosure: [download]

Tags: [edit]

Patrick's HD Hits The Freezer, Heroes star Greg Grunberg joins to talk iPhone Development, Veronica Reviews Nokia's Latest,

16:01
Liquidware announces modular, scalable Arm-based motherboards
» ‎ Engadget

Tags: [edit]

If your idea of fun is developing software for obscure computing platforms, then you're probably already down with Liquidware. It seems that Arduino-based projects like the GamePack and OpenBerry have become a little too easy for the gang, so they've decided to embark on a little project to revolutionize computers by "turning them inside out," so to speak. The Illuminato X Machina is a 4-inch square upon which sits a 72MHz ARM-based microprocessor, a dedicated EEPROM chip for data storage, RAM, LEDs for output, and 14 I/O pins that line each of its four sides -- in short, a fully functional computer. The true magic of the operation, however, lies in the fact that these things are designed to cluster together, with each cell operating in parallel. "Like living organisms," it says at the group's website, the cells are "social." They autonomously communicate, distribute processing power and programming, and even isolate faulty neighbors -- when one of the cells crashes, it won't bring the whole cluster down with it. Believe us, we've only scratched the surface here -- hit that read link order up some of these bad boys for yourself, but not before you check out the videos after the break.

[Via Wired, Thanks Justin]
Continue reading Liquidware announces modular, scalable Arm-based motherboards
Filed under: Desktops
Liquidware announces modular, scalable Arm-based motherboards originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 20 Aug 2009 17:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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16:00
Beat the Heat with Agua Fresca [Summer]
» ‎ Lifehacker

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When it's nothing but hot and humid out, commercial fruit juices can feel like swallowing a sugar packet. The smitten kitchen blog offers up a solution of agua fresca, water that's perfectly balanced with natural fruit flavors and slight sweetness.

This recipe sits perfectly in the concentric center of important summer recipe spheres. It's easy to make, it can be prepped ahead and served fresh with just a quick top-off, it's cheap, and it uses the season's fresh fruit. You'll need a lime or two, a melon somewhere near four pounds, cheesecloth or fine kitchen towels to filter the melon juice, and seltzer or club soda to serve.

Make the basic melon/lime mixture, stash it in the fridge, then spike it with the fizzy stuff (and any other clear liquids you'd like to enjoy) and pass out to grateful friends. Bring it to work in water bottles and you'll get to smirk while your co-workers beeline to the soda machine. For more liquidation inspiration, hit our summer drinks roundup, and share your perfect heat wave relievers in the comments.
melon agua fresca [smitten kitchen]

15:52
TV Drama Adaptation of Shinya Shokudō Manga Announced
» ‎ Anime News Network

Tags: [edit]

Princess Mononoke's Kaoru Kobayashi to star in Manga Taishō-nominated story

15:44
NASA Panel Faces the Facts, and Asteroids
» ‎ Wired Science

Tags: [edit]
The ’60s are over, and no amount of artists’ renderings is going to bring back the Apollo days if NASA’s budget doesn’t get a big boost.

digg_url ="http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/08/augustinecommission/";

That’s the key message from the independent panel chartered to rethink NASA’s future. The Review of Human Space Flight Plans group is also looking at a variety of imaginative approaches to space exploration that could make NASA’s future seem less like reheated Apollo leftovers.

Known informally as the Augustine committee after its head, former Lockheed Martin CEO Norm Augustine, the panel of scientists, astronauts and engineers is nearly ready to present its findings to the Obama administration. It announced today that after a packed schedule in cities around the nation earlier this month, it won’t hold any more public meetings.

The Augustine committee’s preliminary judgments, which have been trickling out over the last several months, bring a measure of reality to NASA’s agenda, which suffered from a gap between the Bush administration’s big talk and limited funding. The truth, the panel has found, is that NASA doesn’t have enough money coming in to satisfy its stated goals of returning humans to the moon and eventually to Mars.

And maybe, some scientists argue, that’s exactly how it should be.

“They don’t do anything for us anyhow. Anything we can do, we can do it better, cheaper, and faster with robots,” said Bob Parks, a University of Maryland physicist, former executive director of the American Institute of Physics. “And I mean cheaper by a factor of 10 to 100. Human beings are just not very good spacecraft.”

Backers of human spaceflight, though, tend to argue that putting a few humans up there inspires the rest of us down here. And for them, the Augustine findings are disappointing, but not entirely unexpected. NASA’s current budget, as Norm Augustine has pointedly said in various interviews, doesn’t support an ambitious program, whether its goals are to go to the moon, Mars, or just some points in between.

While the Obama administration might have to make the tough choice to end major human space endeavors beyond low-Earth orbit, space hasn’t really been a major federal priority for more than 30 years, as military and health have eaten up a combined 80 percent of R&D money. And the Obama administration hasn’t telegraphed a major change in that stance.

“I think these investments in research and development are strongly indicative of concerns at that point in time,” said Jim Dooley, a policy analyst at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, who studies R&D spending and created the graph above for his paper “U.S. Federal Investments in Energy R&D” (.pdf).

The Sputnik scare of the late ’50s and the battle for technological supremacy with the Soviet Union made space a concern and a priority. That sparked the ambitions and funding levels that put humans on the moon, but as other issues became ascendant, the money dried up despite the moon landings’ popularity. It’s worth remembering that not even all the original Apollo missions were actually flown. The funding for space hasn’t reached anywhere near those levels since.

“For all of its wonderful success, Apollo didn’t succeed in becoming sustainable,” said David Mindell, a science and technology historian at MIT who led a team that last year offered NASA some suggestions for the future. “You need a program that Republicans and Democrats will support. It should be robust to the usual four-year cycle of politics.”

So, that’s the situation the Augustine commission inherited. They looked at more than 3,000 possible plans for the human presence in space. Everything was up for re-examination from the planned grounding of the space shuttle, to the de-orbiting of the International Space Station, to rockets used for exploring beyond low-earth orbit.

Now, they’ve narrowed the options to just a handful. All of the options that will be formally submitted to the president will substantially revise the current Constellation program. That’s not much of a surprise, because nearly all parts of that program had come under heavy criticism, including its very existence.

The plans are still rocket-science–complicated with all kinds of contingencies for different budget levels and types of vehicles, but by looking at the scoring rubric the commission is using (.ppt) to compare the ideas to NASA’s goals, we can tell some things already.

First, NASA workers and contractors could be in trouble. Not a single one of the plans got a positive score in the “NASA and Industry Workforce” category. Second, almost all of the Augustine options received neutral or positive ratings for advancing scientific knowledge. Third, an intriguing new set of ideas has captured the committee’s imagination. The “Deep Space” mission plans would forgo landings on the Moon and Mars to focus on visiting nearby asteroids.

There are a host of technical details and variations on each plan, but the key questions (.ppt) are: When will the shuttle be phased out? When will the International Space Station be de-orbited? Which rocket — Ares I, Ares V, modified Ares V, shuttle-styled, or commercial launch vehicle — will be used to go beyond low-Earth orbit?

For the next week or so, we won’t know the specifics, but Mindell said he hopes NASA’s plans for human spaceflight will have defined rationales that create a coherent program.

“I feel,” Mindell said, “like the Augustine panel should be able to go back to the president and science adviser and say, ‘If you want a mission that is 75 percent national pride and 25 percent science, here’s what it will take and how much it will cost.’”

Image: A rendering by Digitalspace shows a possible manned NASA mission to an asteroid.

See Also:
WiSci 2.0: Alexis Madrigal’s Twitter, Google Reader feed, and green tech history research site; Wired Science on Twitter and Facebook.

15:33
EA, Ubisoft execs applaud PS3 price cut, also like things that are good
» ‎ Engadget

Tags: [edit]

Well, this one doesn't exactly come out of left field, but it looks like gaming industry execs are starting to sing a decidedly different tune now that Sony has finally cut the price of the PS3. Speaking with GamesIndustry.biz, Ubisoft bigwig Yves Guillemot said that "it's exceptional news, actually," adding that "I think the machine is a great machine, with the Blu-ray." EA Games president Frank Gibeau was also apparently more than happy to back up that praise, saying that, "I think it's awesome," and that "it's an old line, but it still rings true for us: 'We make the ammunition for the hardware wars.' So the lowest priced hardware possible is a good thing for us." Still noticeably mum on the matter, however, is Activision's CEO, who once threatened to pick up his ball and go home if Sony didn't drop its prices.

[Via Joystiq]
Filed under: Gaming
EA, Ubisoft execs applaud PS3 price cut, also like things that are good originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 20 Aug 2009 16:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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15:04
Cloud Telecomputers announces Android-based Glass platform for desk phones
» ‎ Engadget

Tags: [edit]

It may not be the first to come up with the bright idea of putting Android on a desk phone-esque device, but upstart Could Telecomputers may well be the most ambitious, with it boasting that its new Glass platform "makes the desk phone relevant again," and is "smarter and more powerful than your 'smart cell phone.'" To that end, the company has basically paired a full-fledged, 8-inch Android-based MID with a plain old corded phone, which will let you do things like dial numbers directly from your Outlook address book, pair up a cellphone via Bluetooth and, of course, take advantage of a whole range of Android apps that should put most other internet-connected desk phones to shame. As you probably picked up, however, this is still a platform and not an actual product just yet, but Cloud Telecomputers does have some pretty heavy backers behind it, and it "anticipates" that the first phones should be available sometime in the first quarter of 2010 for between $599 and $699.

[Via PR Newswire]
Filed under: Misc. Gadgets, Household
Cloud Telecomputers announces Android-based Glass platform for desk phones originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 20 Aug 2009 16:04:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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15:00
Decide Which Search Engine You Really Prefer with Bing-Google Mashups [Search]
» ‎ Lifehacker

Tags: [edit]

Unable to choose between Google and Bing? That's ok; these three mashups display results from both search engines in handy side-by-side frames and make life simpler for the indecisive.

Back in July when we asked you to share your search engine of choice, 85% of you were strongly in the Google camp, but Bing had already managed to garner an impressive 11% of the vote. If other online trackers are correct, Bing's share has continued to slowly and steadily grow.

If you want to spend some time figuring out which engine you really prefer, one of these mashups is a good place to start. The premise of these sites is simple. Two search engines, one search box, results side-by-side:

Click on the image for a larger view.

They all look and act just about the same—basic frames with a search box at the top—but you've still got at least three options for Google and Bing mashups:
Bing & Google Bingle Bing vs. Google

I'm a bit biased toward Bingle simply because it has the best name out of the bunch, but which search engine mashup is your favorite? Or are you securely locked in to your favorite search engine? Thanks, Raghav!
14:45
Explore&Burn Quickly Burns Files and Folders to Disc via Right-Click [Downloads]
» ‎ Lifehacker

Tags: [edit]

Windows only: Free application Explore&Burn adds an entry to your right-click context menu that allows you to quickly burn files and folders to CD or DVD.

This right-click utility is dead simple: Click any file, folder, or disk image (e.g., ISO, IMG), select the Burn to disc context menu option, and go through the very quick burning wizard. The application supports most types of burnable media (including Dual Layer discs) and skips the bloat that accompanies a lot of burning software, opting instead for a completely pared down interface and footprint.

Explore&Burn is freeware, Windows only.
Explore&Burn [via FreewareGenius]