Nook Color gets overclocked, further blurs the line between tablet and e-reader
January 17, 2011 No Comment
First, they ported Ubuntu to the Nook Color , and now the intrepid hackers at the XDA Developers Forum have overclocked its stock 800MHz processor to run at speeds up to 1GHz. The mod allows users to have their cake and eat it too, as the custom kernel ups the speed of the CPU while running it at a lower voltage, which means longer battery life — though we don’t know exactly how much longer. Apparently, the developer who wrote the code found that the system became unstable at the 1GHz level, but there were no such problems at 950MHz and below. Hit the source link to download the kernel and see for yourself what a supercharged Nook Color can do. Nook Color gets overclocked, further blurs the line between tablet and e-reader originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 17 Jan 2011 19:26:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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Quick, can you tell these two swirling orbs apart? That’s Sony Ericsson’s logo on the left, and Clearwire’s on the right — and SE thinks they’re confusingly similar enough to have filed a federal trademark lawsuit in Virginia. The situation is pretty basic: Sony Ericsson holds trademark registrations on the various iterations of its sphere logos, and the company thinks Clearwire is confusing the mobile market with its version — and it definitely doesn’t want Clearwire to stamp the logo on phones, which Clearwire is eventually planning to do , money problems or no. SE’s asked the court to forbid Clearwire from using the logo and for a host of monetary damages, which seems like a big risk for a company that’s having cashflow problems to begin with — we’ll see what happens. [Thanks, Alex] Sony Ericsson sues Clearwire for trademark infringement originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 17 Jan 2011 18:53:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Continue reading …RIM: PlayBook is a ‘great standalone tablet,’ not ‘reliant on a BlackBerry’
January 17, 2011 No Comment
We’re sure RIM would still prefer that you own both a BlackBerry smartphone and a PlayBook , but it looks like it’s now going some way to address the potential misconception that you actually need a BlackBerry for the tablet to be of any use. Speaking with Forbes , RIM senior product manager Ryan Bidan insisted that “on its own, this is a great standalone tablet,” and that “this is not a device that is reliant on a BlackBerry.” As Forbes notes, however, it is true that the PlayBook needs to be tied to a BlackBerry for most PIM functions like contacts and calendar management, but Bidan says those features will come to the PlayBook separately “as the platform evolves” — he didn’t get much more specific than that, unfortunately. RIM: PlayBook is a ‘great standalone tablet,’ not ‘reliant on a BlackBerry’ originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 17 Jan 2011 18:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Continue reading …iPad 2 Retina Display evidence mounts, this time a .png of wood is to blame
January 17, 2011 No Comment
So, we heard from our source that the iPad 2 would have a “super high resolution” Retina Display , we heard from AppleInsider that the iPad 2 is getting around 4X the graphics performance of the iPad, and of course there’s the fact that the iPhone 4′s Retina Display offered a pretty impressively painless upgrade path for developers — an iPad 2 with a 2048 x 1536 screen is starting to sound less and less like the crazy dream of naive fanboys. But wait, there’s more! A .png has been found in the iBooks 1.2 source files, dubbed Wood Tile@2x.png. It’s sized at 1536 x 800, while the old and busted Wood Tile.png in iBooks 1.1 was 768 x 400 — that’s 2X in each direction, or 4X the pixels, for anyone who’s counting. Incontrovertible evidence? No, but we want to believe. iPad 2 Retina Display evidence mounts, this time a .png of wood is to blame originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 17 Jan 2011 17:50:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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ECOtality teamed up with Best Buy a few months back to expand its network of Blink EV chargers, and it’s now finally announced which company will actually be connecting that network. ECOtality will be relying on Sprint’s Command Center M2M solution, which will handle things like monitoring and electronic payments, and allow ECOtality to display digital content for advertising or other information, among a host of other network-related things. From an end-user perspective, that also means that folks will be able to keep watch on the Blink network from various devices, find chargers near them with GPS, and receive notifications of a charge interruption or completion. Head on past the break for the complete press release. Continue reading ECOtality teams with Sprint to connect Blink EV charging network ECOtality teams with Sprint to connect Blink EV charging network originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 17 Jan 2011 17:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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BenQ’s monitors may have all come from the same glossy black plastic mold as of late, but the company’s stepped things up a bit for its new 24-inch EW2430 and EW2430V “Vertical Alignment” LED monitors, which pack some high-end specs and some more refined looks to match. Chief among those specs is the VA LED panel used in each monitor, which promises a native 3,000:1 contrast ratio, minimal light leaking, an improved viewing angle, and a true 8-bit color range, among other benefits. You’ll also get a full range of ports (including two HDMI and four USB on each), a pair of 2W speakers, and some added features like “Smart Focus,” “Super Resolution,” and “3D Noise Reduction” on the EW2430V model. Still no word on pricing, but you can look for both monitors to hit Europe and the Asia Pacific region this month, with a worldwide release set to follow sometime thereafter. BenQ debuts high-end EW2430, EW2430V LED monitors originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 17 Jan 2011 16:52:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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Not since Hollywood Reporter told us about a possible Asteroids bio-pic have we been excited about a film or TV show: Deadline Hollywood is reporting that Merv Griffin Entertainment has hammered out a deal with Namco Bandai to develop a reality TV show based on Pac-Man. Envisioned by Merv Griffin Entertainment’s president of TV Roy Bank as something “big” and “crazy” like Wipeout or Fear Factor , the company wants “to take what Pac-Man is and bring it to life, to bring what is essentially the world’s biggest game of tag to television.” If this doesn’t sound like the definition of a mid-season replacement, we don’t know what is. Continue reading Pac-Man reality TV show coming, and not a moment too soon Pac-Man reality TV show coming, and not a moment too soon originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 17 Jan 2011 16:23:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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Could it be that Apple and Foxconn engineers have finally found a way to harness and contain the raw, blinding power of the color white? Last we’d heard, the rarest member of the iPhone 4 clan was tracking for a spring ’11 launch — and that’d line up pretty nicely with shots we’ve received from a trusted source today showing new entries in Vodafone Germany’s inventory system for wei
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Clicking your way through Ulysses and having a hard time remembering just what it is Bloom ate for breakfast or, indeed, just what he did on the beach? Don’t blame James Joyce, blame your Kindle ! A Princeton study entitled “Fortune favors the bold ( and the Italicized )” (their emphasis) has shown that readers retain information more reliably when they are challenged with so-called “disfluent” fonts (like the top one above). This flies in the face of the belief that easy to read text is easier to remember and should give typographical titans something else to ponder when placing text upon a page character by character. Now, what does this have to do with e-readers? Most are stuck with standard fonts that cannot be changed and fall squarely in the “fluent” category — they’re so easy to read your brain spins down. The solution is, of course, to add more and broader font support to the devices, something we’d love to see regardless of scientific merit. Until that comes to pass try holding your Kindle at odd angles or squinting. Maybe that’ll help. Or, you could just put down the Proust and pick up some Clancy. Princeton study shows that easy fonts make things harder to remember originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 17 Jan 2011 15:24:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Continue reading …Universal Music and Sony releasing singles same day they hit the radio, will anyone buy them?
January 17, 2011 No Comment
The humble single has been given a new shot at life, an extension to the lease on its breathing machine, a little more food in its tube. Universal Music and Sony have begun a new policy called “On Air, On Sale” that makes music singles available the same day they hit the airwaves, in theory stemming the tide of piracy by making music available legally more quickly. Of course, the number of people actually listening to those radio stations is also dwindling, and whether or not people really want to buy singles vs. entire albums these days remains to be seen. But, hey, earlier is usually better than later, right? Universal Music and Sony releasing singles same day they hit the radio, will anyone buy them? originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 17 Jan 2011 14:53:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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