Sure, there’s no sword-wielding lady in a leather blouse , but this silent hands-on walkthrough will no doubt prove exciting in its own right for anyone who has been aching to get their hands on the forthcoming Droid Bionic. It’s four minutes and change of scrolling through the Verizon phone’s fancy animations, with a speed test thrown in for good measure. Overall, there’s nothing too earthshaking, but it’s one of the most in-depth walkthroughs we’ve seen of the anticipated and long-delayed device in its current form, adding to that start up video we spotted the other day — and unlike those Verizon ads, it actually has a phone in it. Continue reading Droid Bionic gets a silent walkthrough (video) Droid Bionic gets a silent walkthrough (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 26 Aug 2011 15:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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What can we say? It was an amazing night . We filled the joint to capacity, made about a million new friends, smashed an iPad 2 live on stage, and literally had so much stuff to give away that we ran out of time. The staff is still buzzing (and our ears still ringing) after a fantastic night in the City, and we’re hugely thankful for everyone who came out last night to party with us. And, of course, we’re hugely thankful to our sponsors that helped to make it possible, including Motorola, Get-a-Game, RIM, HTC, Samsung, and AT&T — who brought artist Matt Siren to create a little art live. We have a time-lapse video of that coming together after the break, along with footage of what happens when a set of in-line skates meet up with the display on an iPad 2 provided by uBreakiFix. Spoiler alert: it ain’t pretty. Gallery: Engadget Fall 2011 NYC Reader Meetup Continue reading Engadget NYC Reader Meetup recap Engadget NYC Reader Meetup recap originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 26 Aug 2011 15:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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Not that it particularly needed it , but HP is sweetening the deal for owners of its now defunct TouchPad , offering up six webOS apps for the price of free. The pack includes apps normally ranging in price from $0.99 to $14.99, featuring the multitasking Glimpse, monster-building Big Boss, Camera for TouchPad, and Audubon Birds, a field guide that’s decidedly less slingshot-based that other bird apps. The deal expires on the 31st — all of the promo info can be found in the source link below. The company is set to offer up another app six-pack in September. Update: We’re hearing in comments that the codes are no longer working. Thankfully, HP has promised more free dealies in the near future. HP wants to give you some free apps to go with that new TouchPad originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 26 Aug 2011 13:09:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Continue reading …MIT research team improves wireless security, is starting with the man in the middle
August 26, 2011 No Comment
Now that they’ve finished building a robot capable of making cakes, MIT’s researchers can get on with the serious business of improving our wireless security. In a new study it reveals a technique dubbed tamper-evident pairing that stops so-called man-in-the-middle attacks. Put simply, a hacker intercepts your wireless communications, reads it and passes it onto the recipient, pretending to be you. Because the hacker controls the flow of information between the two parties, it’s difficult to detect. MIT’s process randomizes and encrypts the data with silence patterns and strings of additional information, which a hacker won’t be able to replicate. The best part is that the added security measures only add 23 milliseconds of time onto each transmission. As fixing our wireless security problems is now out the door, the team are probably off to solve some more giant Rubik’s cubes . MIT research team improves wireless security, is starting with the man in the middle originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 26 Aug 2011 13:35:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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Welcome to Engadget’s Back to School guide ! We know that this time of year can be pretty annoying and stressful for everyone, so we’re here to help out with the heartbreaking process of gadget buying for the school-aged crowd. Today we’re getting down to the very important business of helping you sift through laptops, and you can always head to the Back to School hub to see the rest of the product guides as they’re added throughout the month. Be sure to keep checking back — at the end of the month we’ll be giving away a ton of the gear featured in our guides — and hit up the hub page right here ! Ah, laptops. Some of us received our first notebooks the summer before college if not later. But times have changed and we’re sure for many of the kids reading this freshman year is just an excuse to upgrade from the clunkers that carried them through high school. Either way, this one’s pretty much mandatory — unless you’re a serious gamer who insists on a desktop GPU for marathon sessions of CoD: Black Ops , you’re going to need a laptop for pounding out last-minute term papers in the library, taking notes in class and posting incriminating photos on Facebook. The problem is, the market’s overrun with laptops that purport to be just perfect for the back to school set. They can’t all be worth your money, though, so we whittled the list down to a handful of choices for each budget — and if you’re lucky you’ll get your very own HP Pavilion dm1z for the pretty price of, well, nothing. Simply leave a comment below to be entered to win, and check out our giveaway page for more details. So wipe off the glasses, grab your clicker, and get ready to jump past the break for a top-level overview of this year’s picks for back to school. Continue reading Engadget’s back to school guide 2011: laptops Engadget’s back to school guide 2011: laptops originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 26 Aug 2011 12:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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Something big’s been brewing over in Carlsbad , and the time has finally come for it to be revealed to the world: the Razer Blade. The onyx aluminum beaut before you is the culmination of over three years of work by a stealth team of engineers — many of them absorbed from the former OQO team , but Razer also pulled talent from other places to build the Blade. Despite being only 0.88-inches thick (thinner than another 17-incher we know… ), the svelte number still packs a punch with a 2.8GHz Core i7 2640M CPU and GeForce GT 555M graphics replete with 2GB of GDDR5 video memory. All that graphical horsepower will splay your exploits on a 17.3-inch LED 1920 x 1080 full HD panel with an HD webcam nestled above. Rounding out the package is 8GB of RAM, three USB ports (one which’ll support 3.0), HDMI out and a 60Wh integrated battery. And it could all be yours for $2,799 when it debuts in Q4 of this year. That’s dandy, but we’re more stoked on the 480 x 800 LCD trackpad just to the right of the backlit keyboard. It works either as a multitouch enabled input device or as an additional display for in-game info when the mood strikes to slay demons with an external mouse. North of that hotness lie ten fully customizable buttons, both in appearance (courtesy of a separate LCD) and in function. The keys and trackpad are running a custom Switchblade UI — inspired by the company’s oh so sexy Switchblade concept that we saw at CES . And just like the concept, Razer’s used a custom lighting panel to ensure you can see those keys clearly from an angle — people don’t look straight down at their keyboards, after all. Follow on past the break for more impressions, video and PR. Michael Gorman contributed to this report. Gallery: Razer Blade Gallery: Razer Blade preview Continue reading Razer Blade: hands-on with 17-inches of gaming greatness Razer Blade: hands-on with 17-inches of gaming greatness originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 26 Aug 2011 12:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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For those who’ve been dwelling on this planet long enough, you might just remember a category of mobile computers by the name of UMPCs . In particular, think Sony’s VAIO UX and the elusive xpPhone . Alas, those Windows devices were — and probably still are — well ahead of their time no thanks to their battery life, bulkiness and sometimes cost; though for some bizarre reason, Fujitsu begs to differ. In fact, said company took one step further and released a hybrid device in Japan: the LOOX F-07C , a QWERTY slider phone that can switch between Symbian and Windows 7 at a click of a button. Interesting combination, right? Read on to find out how this weird device fares in real life. Gallery: Fujitsu LOOX F-07C with F01 expansion dock Gallery: Fujitsu LOOX F-07C Continue reading Fujitsu LOOX F-07C review Fujitsu LOOX F-07C review originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 26 Aug 2011 10:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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Dell’s Chinese site just took the wraps off the Vostro 360 all-in-one, which we already glimpsed in some prematurely released support documents. The product page actually calls it the ‘Vostro Success 360′ to hammer home its productivity focus, as if the inclusion of Windows 7 Professional Edition wasn’t enough. Other specs are pretty much as expected: a choice of touchscreen or non-touchscreen variants of the 23-inch Full HD WLED display, Intel i3 or i5 processors with the H61 chipset and up to a terabyte of 7200RPM storage. There’s also a 1GB NVIDIA GeForce GT 525M for those out-of-hours LAN parties. The 4,999 Yuan price tag for the base model translates to a respectable $780, but we’ve no clue as to when this office beauty will arrive outside the Chung Kuo. [Thanks, Czar] Dell Vostro 360 unveiled in China, a decently priced all-in-Yuan originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 26 Aug 2011 10:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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So, this is pretty… big . At this very moment, researchers at IBM are building the largest data drive ever — a 120 petabyte beast comprised of some 200,000 normal HDDs working in concert. To put that into perspective, 120 petabytes is the equivalent of 120 million gigabytes, (or enough space to hold about 24 billion, average-sized MP3′s), and significantly more spacious than the 15 petabyte capacity found in the biggest arrays currently in use. To achieve this, IBM aligned individual drives in horizontal drawers, as in most data centers, but made these spaces even wider, in order to accommodate more disks within smaller confines. Engineers also implemented a new data backup mechanism, whereby information from dying disks is slowly reproduced on a replacement drive, allowing the system to continue running without any slowdown. A system called GPFS, meanwhile, spreads stored files over multiple disks, allowing the machine to read or write different parts of a given file at once, while indexing its entire collection at breakneck speeds. The company developed this particular system for an unnamed client looking to conduct complex simulations, but Bruce Hillsberg, IBM’s director of storage research, says it may be only a matter of time before all cloud computing systems sport similar architectures. For the moment, however, he admits that his creation is still “on the lunatic fringe.” IBM developing largest data drive ever, with 120 petabytes of bliss originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 26 Aug 2011 09:35:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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Abbreviation loving multinationals Lucky Goldstar and General Motors have entered into an “Electric Vehicle Cooperation” agreement to build the next generation of EVs. The partnership follows a successful dating phase where LG supplied the batteries for the Chevy Volt . Now, teams from both companies will collaborate on key components, vehicle structures and architectures — which we take to mean that it’s a more substantial proposition than just battery sharing. The plan is to meet the new US fuel economy targets by 2025, so the design phase for the new autos will kick off soon. Let’s hope this new venture bears some fruit that’s faster than a flying banana . LG and GM team up to build next generation of electric cars originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 26 Aug 2011 07:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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