Google Latitude makes brief appearance in App Store, gets yanked post-haste
December 8, 2010 No Comment
Ah, the games that grown-ups play. It’s a situation that’s beginning to feel an awful lot like the Google Voice fiasco that made the rounds in mid-2009, but if it ends in a similar fashion , you won’t find us kvetching about the teases . As the story goes, a bona fine Google Latitude app made its appearance in Japan’s App Store hours ago, only to be yanked before it could sashay over to any other nation. TechCrunch reckons that it was El Goog doing the pulling — it’s quite possible that the folks in Mountain View weren’t quite ready to publicly reveal it, and with all that Chrome action going down yesterday, it’s not hard to imagine how an impending launch was overlooked. At any rate, the description of the app as well as most of the screenshots were in English, so we’re cautiously optimistic that it’ll resurface in the near future once a few Is are dotted and Ts crossed. With iOS 4 supporting background location, there’s hardly a reason to wait any longer, right? Google Latitude makes brief appearance in App Store, gets yanked post-haste originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 08 Dec 2010 09:48:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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Reservists call soldiers in mandatory service ‘homosexuals’. In response, soldiers attack them with stones, poles. One reservist hit on head, loses consciousness; his friend grabs weapon, shoots at ground. ‘They tried to murder us,’ claims shooter
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Image: OVK Slow Down Do you get the feeling your car likes to go faster when you’re blasting a great song on your interactive media system? Come on, admit it: you are secretly rationalizing that if the car goes faster fueled by the music, it must not be using more gas. Sure, your eco-conscience screams “hypermiling is better” but your car just isn’t listening. Now there is an app that will help your car keep its speed in check when you are rocking out on the road. The video below explains how it works…. Read the full story on TreeHugger
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At the Los Angeles premiere of her latest movie ‘Somewhere,’ Sophia Coppola talks about showing the film, which is set in Hollywood, on their ‘own turf’ and Stephen Dorff reveals his plans to have kids ‘one day.’ (Dec. 8)
Continue reading …Nightstand tweets, scans, prints, and presumably makes some sort of artistic statement (video)
December 8, 2010 No Comment
Whether tweeting from trees or providing the catalyst for zany conceptual art projects , people love to make Twitter do silly things. Is this simple whimsy, or is it something deeper — say, some sort of high-minded juxtaposition between the way people live now and how they lived pre-Internet? Hell if we know, but maybe John Kestner can explain it to us. You see, this artist and designer has created something called the Tableau, a networked nightstand that has two functions: scanning and posting images to Twitter, and printing out photos that pop up in your Twitter feed. And that’s it. The thing is made from recycled (read: old) materials, and even features an alert in the shape of a light-up drawer pull for notifying you when you receive pics. It’s all very clever, cool looking, and potentially heartwarming (unless you have us in your Twitter feed, in which case all you’ll receive are pictures of KIRF cellphones). But don’t take out word for it — see for yourself after the break! Currently on display at the Saint-
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Photo credit: M. McCarthy via University of California, Santa Cruz There’s a reason for leaving “no stone unturned” when it comes to scientific exploration — there’s probably life underneath even the most unlikely rock. Even if that rock is well under the seafloor. Researchers from the University of California, Santa Cruz, have found evidence for a biological community of living organisms camped out in porous rock deep underneath the seabed. The microbes are “chemoautotrophic,” getting their energy from chemicals rather than sunlight or sunlight-dependent or… Read the full story on TreeHugger
Continue reading …Peel turns your iPhone into a universal remote — using a wireless external IR blaster
December 8, 2010 No Comment
The idea of using an iPhone or iPod touch as a universal remote has been tossed around for years, but it’s always required either a finicky external dongle or an extravagantly expensive home automation rig . Instead, we’ve been treated to a host of single-device remote apps for everything from FiOS , DirecTV , Comcast , and Dish Network DVRs to the Apple TV to the Boxee Box to… well, you name it. A little company called Peel has a dramatically different idea, though — it’s launching the Peel Universal Control system, which is designed to take your iPhone or iPod touch head-to-head with universal remote heavyweights like Logitech’s Harmony system. The company is made up of a bunch of former Apple engineers, and their solution is extremely novel: instead of attaching a dongle to the iPhone itself, they’re controlling your A/V rack using a pear-sized (and Yves Behar -designed) wireless IR blaster that’s supposed to live quietly on your coffee table. The blaster (called the Peel Fruit) connects over ZigBee to a tiny network adapter (the Peel Cable, also designed by Behar) that attaches directly to an open Ethernet port on your WiFi router — a two-part hardware setup that seems fussy, but is designed to obviate the need for software configuration during installation, and allows the IR blaster to run for nine months on a single C battery. Gallery: Peel iPhone app screenshots Gallery: Peel Universal Control System for iPhone hands-on Continue reading Peel turns your iPhone into a universal remote — using a wireless external IR blaster Peel turns your iPhone into a universal remote — using a wireless external IR blaster originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 08 Dec 2010 09:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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Some incredible news about the success of its first year comes from Ecosia — the search engine site which committed to donating 80% of its profits to a green cause announced it managed to contribute a whopping $160,000 to WWF’s Jureuena rainforest project in Brazil during Ecosia’s very first year of operation. Amazing! … Read the full story on TreeHugger
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Image credit: SandTDesigns , used under Creative Commons license. Since way back in 2006 there has been much hype about Britain’s commitment that all new homes would be zero carbon by 2016 . But there has been confusion too. Last week I posted on George Monbiot’s assertion that the Government had backtracked on its zero carbon pledge , and was somehow arguing t… Read the full story on TreeHugger
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That iconic “fail whale?” It was created in 2007 by an artist named Yiying Lu who had never heard of Twitter when the site grabbed the image from iStockphoto, where she’d uploaded it. The rest, of course, is history and, with the launch of Google eBooks (n
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