Billions and Billions of Thanks for Your Life’s Work! Today would have been the 76th birthday of Carl Sagan, a great popularizer of science, as well as an astronomer, astrophysicist, author, and cosmologist. If you are… Read the full story on TreeHugger
Continue reading …The Economics of Happiness as a Response to Environmental Crisis (video)
November 9, 2010 No Comment
Image credit: The Economics of Happiness From the confessions of an economic hitman to David Korten urging that we rid ourselves of the Wall Street mafia , the green movement is no stranger to the idea that we may need to rethink conventional economic wisdom if we are going to get out of the crisis we face. But a new movie from the International Society for Ecology and Culture puts … Read the full story on TreeHugger
Continue reading …Skip to 30 Seconds In to See the Dog & Dolphin And now, something a bit lighter… I thought this video, which shows a white labrador jumping in a harbor and playing with a dolphin, was just too good not to show here. … Read the full story on TreeHugger
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Scientists say they have taken a big step toward displaying live video in three dimensions _ a technology far beyond 3-D movies and more like the “Star Wars” scene where a ghostly Princess Leia image pleads, “Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi.” (Nov. 9)
Continue reading …BBC iPlayer going international next year, will be either fee- or ad-supported
November 9, 2010 No Comment
The BBC’s iPlayer video-on-demand service has been an unqualified success since its rollout back in 2007 and now it’s taking the next logical step in expanding its reach: it’s going global. Such is the word from John Smith, the generically named head of BBC Worldwide, who sees the international market for British shows as “under-exploited” and wants to see the iPlayer opened up beyond the Queen’s home isles. Of course, since continental Europeans and North Americans aren’t subject to the same backbreaking TV license fee, there’ll be a new commercial element to the service, though the Beeb’s bigwigs have yet to figure out if that means users will have to pay a levy or put up with some ads. Either way, we’ve got quite a few eager iPlayer viewers on our own staff, so we imagine whenever and however the switch does get flipped, it’ll be welcomed by all. BBC iPlayer going international next year, will be either fee- or ad-supported originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 09 Nov 2010 08:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Continue reading …E Ink shows off Triton color ePaper, touts faster performance, readability in sunlight (video)
November 9, 2010 No Comment
E Ink Triton. That’s the name we should all start getting used to as E Ink Holdings has just officially announced its first color electronic paper display. It was only yesterday that we learned Hanvon would be the first to bring the newly colorized e-reading panels to the market, so today the eponymous E Ink display maker has seen fit to dish out its own press release, catchy title, and even a handy explanatory video. The key points are that the new Triton stuff will offer 20 percent faster performance, sunlight-readable imaging, and up to a month’s battery life. That would suggest there’s almost no sacrifice in endurance relative to E Ink’s monochromatic screens already on offer in things like Amazon’s Kindle , which sounds all kinds of righteous to us. Skip past the break to get better acquainted with the Triton. Continue reading E Ink shows off Triton color ePaper, touts faster performance, readability in sunlight (video) E Ink shows off Triton color ePaper, touts faster performance, readability in sunlight (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 09 Nov 2010 03:25:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Continue reading …Yves Rossy’s jetpack loops a hot air balloon, looks great doing it (video)
November 9, 2010 No Comment
Looks like Swiss daredevil Yves Rossy is back to the, well, daredeviltry. On November 5, 2010, the self-described Jetman lept off a platform attached to the side of the Esprit Breitling Orbiter hot air balloon and, after reaching an altitude of 2,400 meters (7,874 feet), came back to loop around the thing twice. He was aided in his endeavor by a new, smaller wing (two meters across) with four jets, and executed the maneuvers using only his body movements to steer. Afterward, he deployed his parachute and landed in Denezy, in the Swiss canton of Vaud. We might also add that we tried to get one of these devices for an Engadget Show giveaway, but our lawyers seem to think it’s a terrible idea. Video after the break. Continue reading Yves Rossy’s jetpack loops a hot air balloon, looks great doing it (video) Yves Rossy’s jetpack loops a hot air balloon, looks great doing it (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 09 Nov 2010 02:57:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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As promised , the boys and girls at Opera have pushed out an Android-flavored beta version of their Opera Mobile 10.1 product today — and considering the company’s track record for making awesome replacement browsers, odds are good that you’re going to want to check it out. Besides pinch-to-zoom and support for location services, you’ll find fan favorites like desktop browser sync and Opera’s Speed Dial, a touchable grid of bookmarks. What’s more, the visual tab management is downright slick (then again, outdoing the tab management in-built to Android doesn’t take much), so you might want to take it for a test drive today — can we suggest engadget.com as a fine starting point? The app’s available from the Android Market right now; follow the break for the press release and an official demo of pinch-to-zoom in action. Or, you know, just download it and do some pinch-to-zooming of your own. Your call. Continue reading Opera Mobile 10.1 for Android hits public beta Opera Mobile 10.1 for Android hits public beta originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 09 Nov 2010 02:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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A quick refresher: Bobcat is AMD’s low-power Accelerated Processing Unit that can handle both computational and graphical duties, Ontario and Zacate are the chips built upon that core, and Brazos is the overall platform that they’ll be doing their work on. Clear enough? We hope so. AMD has finally allowed a few tech pubs to get their hands on Brazos-based systems and, along with feedback about their experience, the guys have come back with some added spec notes. There’ll be two initial Zacate options, the dual-core E-350 running at 1.6GHz or the single-core E-240 clocked at 1.5GHz, while Ontario will offer 1GHz dual-core and 1.2GHz single-core variants. Let’s not forget that both are intended for netbooks and lithe desktop computers before writing them off as too slow — which would be a mistake anyway as the sites that got a chance to play with the E-350 reported very respectable performance. HardOCP dared to try out Crysis and managed to get it chugging along at a resolution around 720p, whereas Hot Hardware witnessed a 1080p video clip being played back perfectly smoothly alongside an instance of Hyper Pi maxing out the CPU load. Benchmark results will have to wait for another day, but feel free to peruse the links below for a more detailed breakdown of the new architecture. AMD teases Bobcat Fusion APUs again, delivers Atom-busting performance originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 09 Nov 2010 01:37:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Continue reading …Google TV’s Fancast.com backdoor to Hulu video closed; Syfy starts blocking too
November 8, 2010 No Comment
Even though Hulu has been blocking Google TV , for a few days users could still access the videos through Comcast’s Fancast.com portal, but that loophole has been closed, repeating a pattern seen after the launch of Flash on Froyo and the overall path of Google TV up to this point. Even more notably, Syfy has joined corporate parent NBC in blocking its streams from the devices. So there you have it, despite being technologically able to play most video on the internet, the Google TV’s selection is still limited by license agreements. Obviously a HTPC is the access route of choice if you’re into cord cutting or just don’t like limits, but if it can’t fix the access problem soon, where does Google’s baby really fit into the connected TV market? Check NewTeeVee for a list of what streaming services you can still check out on Google TV, at least, when you’re not playing WoW . Google TV’s Fancast.com backdoor to Hulu video closed; Syfy starts blocking too originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 08 Nov 2010 19:27:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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