We've known the company's in dire financial shape, but this looks like the beginning of the crew abandoning ship. You can't even order off the Dollar Menu with a share of Eastman Kodak. At a certain point that I doubt is too far off, there's not going to be any value left. Their lawyers might soon be charging up their camera phones for bankruptcy court.
Sep 30, 2011
Kodak Is on the Verge of Being Worth Zero Dollars
We've known the company's in dire financial shape, but this looks like the beginning of the crew abandoning ship. You can't even order off the Dollar Menu with a share of Eastman Kodak. At a certain point that I doubt is too far off, there's not going to be any value left. Their lawyers might soon be charging up their camera phones for bankruptcy court.
Symbian. Today, Officially Passed the Torch
After placing all bets on Windows Phone, Stephen Elop announced that Nokia would slowly phase out its OG operating system, Symbian. Today, it's officially passed the torch, handing over all Symbian-related duties to Accenture, a consulting and outsourcing firm. 2,300 former Nokia employees will also be repurposed, getting a new name on their paycheck as they tend to the ill-fated OS. The Finnish mainstay says the arrangement will last until at least 2016, and plans to continually roll out updates during this time. Not everyone is hanging on another five years though, as it seems that at least 500 employees have jumped ship or found new gigs within the company since the original announcement predicting 2,800 reassignments.
Samsung Unveils Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus, Packing 1.2GHz Dual-core CPU and Coated in Honeycomb
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In terms of connectivity, you'll find support for quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE, 3G with 21Mbps HSPA and the usual smattering of Bluetooth 3.0 and GPS capabilities. In addition, this little guy offers WiFi 802.11, along with support for channel bonding and apt-X Codec for Bluetooth. Pricing has yet to be announced, but the 7.0 Plus is slated to hit Indonesia and Austria by the end of October, before rolling out internationally.
Sep 29, 2011
Chrome’s About to Knock Firefox to Third Place
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According to internet stats firm StatCounter, Chrome's grown in use by 50%—and is on track to take the silver medal by December. StatCounter is just one company among many that do the exact same thing, so these figures aren't ironclad. But the trend definitely is—IE languishes, and Firefox hasn't done much to excite us in a while. Chrome, on the other hand, at least has Google beating its drum; a luxury afforded by, you know, being owned by megarich Google. The long term trend here—emphasis on long—is the gradual decline of IE. Eventually, I'd expect Firefox and Chrome to take the number one and two spots. It's just a matter of when, and who'll be the new king.
The Panasonic Lumix Phone 101P Might Not Suck at Being a Camera or a Phone
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This thing is going to pack a 13.2MP CMOS Lumix sensor. In case you don't know, the image sensors in Lumix cameras are pretty great. It's also going to have a 4-inch QHD LCD screen with 960×540 resolution and a 1Ghz TI OMAP4430 dual-core processor. It's waterproof, like all gadgets should be, it runs Android 2.3 (Gingerbread)
Traditionally, the cameras on phones have been not so great, and it's no wonder; trying to smash a camera into something as thin as a phone creates a ton of challenges and severely limits the size of the image sensor and the lens. No camera phone will ever replace your SLR, but if Panasonic gets this right, they might just be able to replace your point-and-shoot. As someone who hates having several large items in his pockets, I'm really rooting for them to knock this one out of the park.
No mention of pricing or if this will be available stateside (or anywhere outside of Japan).
Another Dead Satellite Is Blindly Plummeting to Earth
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The ROSAT was originally an X-Ray observatory developed by Germany, the United States, and the United Kingdom and launched in 1990. Its design life was 18 months, but it functioned fully through 1994, and was only shut down for good in 1999. And now it's coming to kill us all.
For its part, the German Aerospace Agency promises to provide frequent updates, similar to NASA during the UARS scare. Though apparently the ROSAT's orbit means it could land anywhere from Canada to South America, which sounds totally reasonable and not at all incredibly horrifying. And the odds of its debris crushing a human being are a less optimistic 1-in-2000, compared to UARS's 1-in-3200.
The danger period is still a pretty wide window, so you certainly have time to get your affairs in order before you're crushed to death but a 2.4-ton molten German satellite.
Sep 28, 2011
Twitter Is Ready for iOS 5
We know Twitter will be integrated into the core of iOS 5. That's a big deal. So what is the SF startup doing to prepare for the onslaught of traffic they're sure to face? Well, nothing.
According to Twitter's VP of Engineering Michael Abbot, they're already pretty comfortable with the state of their current infrastructure, and feel like the upgrades and improvements they've made to their servers over the past year is built to handle any extra action iOS 5 will throw at it.
According to Twitter's VP of Engineering Michael Abbot, they're already pretty comfortable with the state of their current infrastructure, and feel like the upgrades and improvements they've made to their servers over the past year is built to handle any extra action iOS 5 will throw at it.
"During the last nine months, there's been more infrastructure changes at Twitter than there had been in the previous five years at the company," said Abbott, who joined Twitter in May 2010. "So that whether it be the death of bin Laden, or someone announces a pregnancy, we can handle those issues and you're not seeing a fail whale."
ASUS TOUGH 7-inch Wwater and Dust Resistant Honeycomb Tablet Lands in Japan
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Ferroelectric Transistor Memory Could run on 99 Percent Less Power Than Flash
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Sep 27, 2011
YouTube to Launch ‘Channels’ That Are Like TV Channels
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Where Were You When Google Was Born 13 Years Ago Today?
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It's an arbitrary date selected in 2005 to celebrate Google's September milestones. Google first registered Google.com on September 15, 1997 and the company was incorporated on September 7, 1998. Instead of either one of those two dates, Google selected the 27th because they're Google and they can.
It's hard to believe the search engine is now officially entering the troubled teens.
The iPhone 5 Event Is Officially October 4th
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It's a nice looking invitation, ain't it? The icons are perfect: the date is the date, of course, the Maps icon is where to show up (Apple's campus), the clock icon provides the time, (10 AM PST), and the phone icon? That, paired with "Let's talkiPhone" might be a clue that Assistant—Apple's rumored talk-control iOS feature—is going to take a big chunk of the spotlight. We'll see! Start saving your pennies—it could be on shelves only a couple weeks later.
Sep 26, 2011
T-Mobile reveals HTC Amaze 4G
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Pushing its photography credentials, the Amaze 4G's eight megapixel shooter can record 1080p video, with a dedicated camera button (and even a direct-to-camcorder button) to make the most of the handset's promised "zero shutter lag." Its also got that backlit sensor found in its sibling, the myTouch 4G Slide. On the software side, it's running Android 2.3.4, coated in the inevitable Sense veneer and supporting the likes of HTC Watch and T-Mobile TV. Will it be enough to steal the network's king of Android crown away from the Galaxy S II when it ships October 12th?
Fujitsu-Toshiba Unveils Waterproof Phone With 13 Megapixel CMOS Sensor
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Samsung's Omnia W: Mango, 3.7-inch Super AMOLED, 1.4GHZ processor
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Sep 25, 2011
Facebook Cookie Tracks Users Even When They’re Logged Out
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So says hacker Nik Cubrilovic anyway, after he discovered during a series of tests that Facebook alters its tracking cookie code the moment you log out, instead of deleting them. Then, when a user being tracked in this manner heads to a web site that contains a Facebook button or widget, the browser continues to send "personally identifiable information" back to Facebook.
"With my browser logged out of Facebook, whenever I visit any page with a Facebook like button, or share button, or any other widget, the information, including my account ID, is still being sent to Facebook," Cubrilovic wrote in a blog post describing the find today. More here.
eT-shirt From Spain Looks After Your Heart
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DNA Proves Your Fancy Suit Isn’t a Fake
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The Huddersfield, UK Textile Centre of Excellence is coordinating the effort to get wool merchants on board with the anti-counterfeiting effort. It's incumbent upon individual wool-purveyors to insert the DNA into their wool. The Center of Excellence has installed a forensic lab to analyze company's woolens and give its stamp of approval. So far participating companies include Dormeuil, Taylor and Lodge, and Holland and Sherry, among others, which supply fabric to some of the fanciest designers around the world including Duncan Quinn and Tom Ford, who made Daniel Craig's suits for Quantum of Solace .
Applied DNA Sciences has sold similar programs to Supima cotton, the wine industry, electronics manufacturers and law enforcement.
Sep 24, 2011
How Steve Jobs Ruined Comics
Before the iPhone, "This image would clearly be understood without the voice balloon, or the character's open mouth," says cartoonist Tom Pappalardo, who jokes that Steve Jobs ruined comics.
It's kind of cool to read comics on the iPad, but Apple's shiny gadgets have wreaked havoc on how the people who create those comics tell their stories. After the cartoonist realized that drawing newfangled devices presented new problems for explaining what was happening in comics panels, he grabbed a sketchpad and started to collect his thoughts. What resulted was a series of panels he put in a blog post titled "Cartooning vs. Technology: How Steve Jobs Ruined Comics."
It's a smart and funny read, but the 37-year-old graphic designer and author of weekly web comic The Optimist said he hopes it's understood he meant no disrespect to Jobs himself, or Apple's products.
"As devices get smaller and feature less exterior detail, more overt context and visual cues need to be provided by the artist/writer to explain what the device is," Pappalardo said in an e-mail to Wired.com. "I think Steve Jobs is responsible for the creation of beautiful, wonderfully refined objects (the title of my blog post is hopefully read with tongue firmly in cheek)."
Pappalardo's panels don't target just Apple devices - Bluetooth headsets and giant flat-screen TVs are also up for discussion. Throughout, he addresses an interesting problem. In a medium built entirely around flat visuals, it is pretty hard to figure out how one square slab (an iPhone) can be differentiated from another (an electric shaver). More here.
It's kind of cool to read comics on the iPad, but Apple's shiny gadgets have wreaked havoc on how the people who create those comics tell their stories. After the cartoonist realized that drawing newfangled devices presented new problems for explaining what was happening in comics panels, he grabbed a sketchpad and started to collect his thoughts. What resulted was a series of panels he put in a blog post titled "Cartooning vs. Technology: How Steve Jobs Ruined Comics."
It's a smart and funny read, but the 37-year-old graphic designer and author of weekly web comic The Optimist said he hopes it's understood he meant no disrespect to Jobs himself, or Apple's products.
"As devices get smaller and feature less exterior detail, more overt context and visual cues need to be provided by the artist/writer to explain what the device is," Pappalardo said in an e-mail to Wired.com. "I think Steve Jobs is responsible for the creation of beautiful, wonderfully refined objects (the title of my blog post is hopefully read with tongue firmly in cheek)."
Pappalardo's panels don't target just Apple devices - Bluetooth headsets and giant flat-screen TVs are also up for discussion. Throughout, he addresses an interesting problem. In a medium built entirely around flat visuals, it is pretty hard to figure out how one square slab (an iPhone) can be differentiated from another (an electric shaver). More here.
Microsoft Patents Modular Windows Phone with Swappable Batteries, Keyboard, and Gamepad
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NASA’s Satellite Crashes In the Pacific Ocean
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According to NASA, the satellite penetrated the atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean between 11:23 p.m. and 1:09 a.m. last night, making it likely that it's floating out in open water somewhere. As expected, most of the 20-year-old, 12,500 pound satellite probably burned up upon reentry. It's a wonderful the send off, too. The UARS was launched in September 1991 as part of a mission with the just-decommissioned Space Shuttle Discovery. It measured ozone and chemical levels in our atmosphere until 2005, when the Bush administration pulled the plug on it.
And now it's home. It must have been quite the light show. The Christian Science Monitor reports that debris fell over Okotoks, Canada late last night. No one was hurt. Also, people from Maui all the way out to Florida report having seen the metal debris burn up in the night sky.
Sep 23, 2011
Scientists Design A Magnetic Cloaking Device
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The antimagnet uses a superconducting material that blocks the internal magnetic field of an object and several dampening layers to block the effect of the superconductor on the external magnetic field. Sounds complicated, and it is, but it could save your life some day.
Take, for example, a person with a pacemaker who needs an MRI. The magnetic field of the MRI would damage the pacemaker and potentially harm the patient. Likewise, the pacemaker's metal would interfere with the MRI's magnetic field and throw off the machine's results. A magnetic cloak could potentially negate these effects and let patients with a pacemaker receive a successful MRI scan.
It would also work to protect military ships from mines that detonate when they detect a magnetic field. If the magnetic field is cloaked, then the mines can't detect it and there's no devastating explosion.
The cloaking technology is in the design stage and will move into production so it can be tested in the real world.
Heads up! Space Junk Falling to Earth
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A U.S. research satellite is expected to plummet back to Earth sometime tomorrow and although much of the bus-sized satellite will burn up upon re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere, about 26 significant-sized chunks are expected to remain.
"There is a lot of space junk out there and continually there are satellites and other pieces of space junk that are entering Earth's atmosphere," she says, adding that a piece of this size returns to Earth about once a year.
NASA's website states there have been no confirmed reports of injury or significant property damage due to falling satellites thus far. An Oklahoma woman was apparently hit on the shoulder by a small piece of a rocket in 1997, but was not hurt.
NASA says there are about 21,000 pieces of "orbital debris" - man-made objects in orbit which serve no useful purpose - that are larger than 10 centimetres (four inches). It estimates there are about 500,000 pieces of space junk sized between one and 10 centimetres (0.4 and four inches) and probably tens of millions that are smaller than one centimetre (0.4 inches).
Since the space program started, about one piece of space junk falls to Earth each day. NASA predicts the 26 pieces of space junk expected to hit the Earth from this satellite will have a combined weight of 532 kilograms (1,173 pounds), the largest of which is expected to weigh 158 kilograms (348 pounds).
"You might expect there to be some damage if (a piece) fell on some property. It would probably damage it significantly,"
Given that, it would be nice to know if one should stay inside tomorrow or not, but not only is it difficult to predict the time the satellite debris will land, it's pretty well impossible to pinpoint with any accuracy where it will land.
"If there was a trajectory that this hunk of metal was travelling through and it was unimpeded, then we would be able to predict very well (where it will land), but there are all sorts of influences it may experience," Edwards says, including wind.
NASA expects the chunks will all land within 800 kilometres (500 miles) of each other - it's just not quite sure where that 800-kilometre stretch will be. Even within about two hours of the expected re-entry time, the best it will be able to do is predict within about 12,000 kilometres (7,500 miles) of the landing point.
In other words, if you happen to get hit by a piece of the landing satellite, you are very, very unlucky indeed. This particular satellite was launched in 1991, but was decommissioned in 2005.
In-app Purchasing Fail on iTunes is Starting to Bug Developers
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Sep 22, 2011
UK Gets First Hydrogen Refueling Station
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BOC's hoping the experience, which reportedly looks and functions much like a traditional gas station, will serve as an example of the private - public partnerships required to rollout infrastructure for alternative energy adoption. So, it's good news for the fuel cell-equipped handful of you cruising about Swindon town, or just passing through on a 'round the world tour.
You Can Test Drive a Bionic Hand Without Actually Losing Your Hand
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Virtu-limb works with either the i-LIMB Ultra—the update to the really awesome i-LIMB—or with some custom software that renders the hand's actions in real time. It works by gathering the same myoelectric signals that the bionic limb would normally gather from a patient, but routing it through a computer instead of a surgically attached limb.
The test drive feature has a few uses beyond just being a cool toy for nerdboys playing Terminator. It's good for helping determine which muscles are best suited to sending the prostheses myoelectric signals and helping to train patients to control muscle signals. And it can also be used by prospective patients before having the limb added. It's absolutely a really great technology, but I'm just wondering how long until some intrepid nerd tries it out and decides to replace a fully functional hand. More here.
Two Megapixel Mini-Camera Measures in at Under a Cubic Inch
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Sep 21, 2011
Facebook May Let You Listen To Music With Your Friends
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According to the now deleted tweet, when a friend is listening to a track, you'll be able to join them and listen to the same song at the same time. It'll be like sharing headphones over the Internet, but only better since it's on Facebook.
Windows 8 ditches '80s BIOS boot for streamline UEFI
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Everything You Need to Know About the Facebook Update
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This latest flurry of updates caps off a steady flow of tweaks over the past few weeks. You now subscribe to your friends' updates as you would an RSS feeds. You can subscribe to people you're not even friends with. You can organize friend groups by type (in Google+ fashion), not just for chat purposes. And you also have more on-the-fly control over who does and doesn't see your wall posts. All of these features come together to make Facebook feel different, even if it's fundamentally unchanged at its core.
Apple to Hold Media Event on October 4th, Tim Cook to Unveil iPhone 5
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This would mark the first time that Cook has actually led an Apple event, adding an extra wrinkle of significance to an already highly anticipated occasion. The site's sources went on to say that the next-gen iPhone will be available for purchase "within a few weeks" of the announcement, though All Things Digital acknowledges that the exact date of its unveiling is still subject to change.
Sep 20, 2011
Researchers Convert Soundwaves Into Electromagnetic Rnergy
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At the moment, the project is looking into materials that are able to eke out more voltage from the process -- perhaps a few years later screaming at our phones will give their batteries a boost?
Sony Ericsson Xperia Play 4G ready at AT&T for $50
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Sep 19, 2011
Can Bird Poop Really Crack Your Car’s Windshield?
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The answer? Maaaaybe, if it was an especially large avian dump and had some debris in it. But I'm nowhere near smart enough to know if he's right or not. Click through for the math and headache and general feeling of insignificance. More here.
Facebook Photo Library Dwarfs Everything Else on the Planet
It's 10,000 times larger than the photo catalog in the Library of Congress! And Flickr, which I erroneously thought would be larger than anything else, is just a tiny fraction of Facebook.
Digital cameras are now ubiquitous – it is estimated that 2.5 billion people in the world today have a digital camera. If the average person snaps 150 photos this year that would be a staggering 375 billion photos. That might sound implausible but this year people will upload over 70 billion photos to Facebook, suggesting around 20% of all photos this year will end up there. Already Facebook's photo collection has a staggering 140 billion photos, that's over 10,000 times larger than the Library of Congress.
According to 1000memories, so far humanity has taken 3.5 trillion. Right now, "every 2 minutes today we snap as many photos as the whole of humanity took in the 1800s."
Maybe someday someone would do something incredibly useful with them, like monitoring the state of mind of the whole planet by analyzing the expressions and landscapes of all these photos.
Researchers Use Wireless Network to Monitor Breathing, Could Save Lives
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Sep 18, 2011
Facebook Music Will Incorporate Rhapsody, Deezer, and SoundCloud
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Did a White iPhone 4S Just Pop up in AT&T's System?
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Sep 17, 2011
Does Google’s Own CEO Even Use Google+ Anymore?
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Targus to Rrelease new WiFi PAN-equipped Laser Mouse this September
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Sep 16, 2011
Skype Now Lets You Chat With Facebook Friends and See Your Wall
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I wish this happened more often, because I'm tired of having to deal with so many ways to communicate with my friends and family. Imagine a world in which every single instant messaging, voice and visual communication system operated between each other, regardless of the company who owns the system. Or imagine the same in reverse: a world where you couldn't call someone's cellphone because they were in a different network. This is stupid.
This Shape-Shifting Sofa
love sofas. I love them for siestas, for reading, for playing games, for eating breakfast by the window, for cunnilingus and other fun activities. Sofas are one of my favorite things. And the Cay Sofa looks like a dream.
Created by Alexander Rehn by dividing surfaces and linking them through ingeniously placed hinges, the sofa adapts to the different positions of your body, embracing it. That's what I like about it, because I like to change positions for all the things above. No motors, no buttons. Just simply clever design. More here.
Created by Alexander Rehn by dividing surfaces and linking them through ingeniously placed hinges, the sofa adapts to the different positions of your body, embracing it. That's what I like about it, because I like to change positions for all the things above. No motors, no buttons. Just simply clever design. More here.
Why Do We Use The Term Cellular Phone Instead of Mobile Phone?
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The world cellular, as it describes phone technology, was used by engineers Douglas H. Ring and W. Rae Young at Bell Labs. They diagrammed a network of wireless towers into what they called a cellular layout. Cellular was the chosen term because each tower and its coverage map looked like a biological cell. Eventually, phones that operated on this type of wireless network were called cellular phones.
The term mobile phone predates its cellular counterpart. The first mobile phone call was placed in 1946 over Bell System's Mobile telephone service, a closed radiotelephone system. And the first commercial mobile phones were installed cars in the 1970s.
Eventually, the two names, mobile phone and cellular phone, became synonymous, especially here in the US. But some people disagree with that usage. They consider the term "cellular phone" to be a misnomer because the phone is not cellular, the network is. The phone is a mobile phone and it operates on a cellular network. So what do you think, is this just splitting hairs or do we need to be more careful about what we call our phones?
Sep 15, 2011
Is This the Best New Look at the iPhone 5?
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BGR spied the leaked case accessory, which briefly made an appearance on Case-Mate before they yanked it down. Oh, and is that an aluminum back I spy? I hope so.
In addition to the case, an allegedly-real iPhone 5 screen protector appeared in the wild. Unearthed by Hong Kong tech site Unwired.hk, the screen film also backs up the expectedly-widened home button. The dimensional difference looks to be the same illustrated by the leaked case from earlier in the month. We'll find out for sure soon! Very, very soon.
Google Loads up on IP Again, buys 1,000 More Patents From IBM
Seems like we've heard this story before -- Google buys a bunch of patents to protect its cute little green baby from all the big, bad patent lawsuits. Only this time, instead of buying a hardware manufacturer to expand its patent warchest, team Mountain View merely purchased 1,023 bits of IP from IBM.
Covering everything from a method for filling holes in printed wiring boards to a method for file system management, Google seems to have grabbed quite the eclectic collection -- one we're sure Big G will put to work for itself and its buddies in no time. Those looking to see the full results of this latest patent shopping spree can see more here.
Windows Phones Aaren't Selling Very Well
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Steve Ballmer: "We haven't sold quite as many as I would have liked in the first year." His cunning plan? Well, that's easy: make it all Nokia's problem. Or, as he put it: "With Nokia we have a dedicated hardware partner that is all-in on Windows Phones." Indeed, the Finnish manufacturer has now staked far more than Microsoft on the success of this "third ecosystem" and, if its imminent Mango handsets fail to turn things around, we may eventually see Stephen Elop standing behind that silent cash register.
Sep 14, 2011
Exercise Headphones Designed to Stay Put
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Like other old school speaker companies Polk has decided to make the jump from wooden boxes to headphones. I like that idea, because Polk's awesome sound shouldn't be confined to home theaters and stereos. Detailed specs aren't yet available, but I'd expect these to sound amazing. What is really going to set these apart for exercise addicts is the attention to function. The over-ear hook is pliable and made of a moldable rubbery material so that they will sit securely on your ear. Get them here.
Windows 8’s Blue Screen of Death Is Like a Sad Girl Texting You
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It's ok, Windows 8 tablet. Shh shh. It's gonna be ok.
SanDisk's Memory Vault Will Store Your Photos Longer Than Anyone Cares
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Sep 13, 2011
Logitech’s Wireless Touchpad Is a Magic Trackpad for Windows
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The Logitech Wireless Touchpad doesn't quite have the same pizazz in form or name, but looks like it could at least replicate someof the functionality of OS X's stroke-able pad. At 5 inches across, it's got pretty much the same surface area as its magic Apple brother and supports up to four fingers at a time, though lacks the Bluetooth beaming and, very frustratingly, OS X support. Why not throw it in there and give Apple some competition? Logitech's mice are a hell of a lot better than anything Apple makes—it could very well be the same for this desk swiper too. Get it here.
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