XBMC 10.0 ‘Dharma’ now available to download with improvements galore, add-on manager and Apple TV support
December 19, 2010 No Comment
You may have gifts for every family member under your Yuletide tree, but we’re willing to bet you haven’t given much thought to your trusty media center PC. Thankfully, the open-source community once again has a ready-made present, ready to be loaded right now — the 10.0 release of XBMC , filled with goodies and toys. It’s available for Windows, Linux, Mac and even the original Apple TV, and brings a brand-new add-on manager that lets you extend functionality and improve appearance right from the UI. There’s also hardware acceleration for every platform, including special consideration for nettops sporting NVIDIA ION 2 or Broadcom Crystal HD chips, and even the underpinnings of support for Windows 7 touchscreens, ARM processors and OpenGL ES 2.0. The catalog of improvements is honestly rather staggering, so rather than read them all here, you can follow our source links to the full changelog and download pages, while we try to spread the Christmahanukwanzaakah cheer. [Thanks to everyone who sent this in] XBMC 10.0 ‘Dharma’ now available to download with improvements galore, add-on manager and Apple TV support originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 19 Dec 2010 13:08:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Continue reading …UK voice choir sings Please Retweet Me song for charity, probably has no idea what it means (video)
December 19, 2010 No Comment
So here’s the deal: the UK Meningitis Trust wants to help raise awareness about the disease it’s dedicated to battling and has a 30-strong male voice choir at its disposal to do it with. How does it reach the widest possible audience? If your ideas include namedropping every major social media site set up over the last decade, a nod to the iPhone versus Android dichotomy, and the use of Yahoo as a bad pun, then you must be the guy responsible for putting together the video after the break. Congratulations, it’s awesome. The behind-the-scenes footage with these old crooners isn’t too terrible either. Continue reading UK voice choir sings Please Retweet Me song for charity, probably has no idea what it means (video) UK voice choir sings Please Retweet Me song for charity, probably has no idea what it means (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 19 Dec 2010 12:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Continue reading …Google hacked site notification notifies you if your site is hacked (repeat this five times fast)
December 19, 2010 No Comment
Those crazy cats at Google have been tinkerin’ with the search results quite a bit lately: in addition to the old standbys (malware notifications, updated image search ), the company has recently rolled out Instant Search , Instant Preview … and now? That’s right: hacked site notifications in the search results. According to the Webmaster Central blog, the company uses “a variety of automated tools to detect common signs of a hacked site,” and if you have a Webmaster Tools account you’ll even be notified of the breach. Hit the source link for more info. Google hacked site notification notifies you if your site is hacked (repeat this five times fast) originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 19 Dec 2010 09:06:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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Panasonic’s plasma sets get most of the attention, and perhaps rightfully so , but it’s actually the company’s new LCD lineup for Japan that can help you make use of your woefully neglected SDXC cards. In addition to compiling terrestrial HDTV footage on a standard external hard drive, the Panasonic Viera G3 and X3 can record to a new SD card slot as well, archiving up to five hours of 1080p footage on a ‘standard’ 64GB SDXC card. We put ‘standard’ in quotes because while that’s presently the typical capacity for that particular designation of flash, it’ll still cost you upwards of $200 to get in on the ground floor , and that’s a pittance compared to what Panasonic’s charging for its own . Who said magnetic storage was dead? If Tokyo’s where you hang your hat, expect both the G3 and X3 series to hit stores near you in February of next year. Panasonic’s new LCD TVs record video to SDXC originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 19 Dec 2010 06:09:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Continue reading …Chevy builds antenna into body of 2011 Camaro convertible, includes free bumpers for all (video)
December 19, 2010 No Comment
We know all about the great woes that can befall a company when it tries to integrate an antenna into the body of its product, so we couldn’t resist covering Chevrolet ‘s latest attempt to do the same — but on a larger scale. Early versions of the 2011 drop-top Camaro found themselves rolling out and about with a rather unsightly appendage hanging off the rear, a big whip antenna that was a little too genuinely retro to go with the machine’s throwback styling queues. On most cars today the antenna is integrated into the rear windshield but, given the disappearing nature of this car’s roof, that wasn’t possible here. For help GM turned to two dedicated Antenna Engineers, Don Hibbard and Gregg Kittinger, who managed to find a way to bury the unsightly thing inside the svelte spoiler perched on the rear deck lid. Problem solved — well, except that XM and OnStar require a separate shark fin that can sadly still be seen hanging out on the trunk. Maybe the 2012 model will be totally fresh and clean. Continue reading Chevy builds antenna into body of 2011 Camaro convertible, includes free bumpers for all (video) Chevy builds antenna into body of 2011 Camaro convertible, includes free bumpers for all (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 19 Dec 2010 03:03:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Continue reading …Multitouch Twitter wall to fascinate onlookers, Engadget staffers at #CES
December 19, 2010 No Comment
CES is no stranger to larger-than-life display installations , but as this whole “social networking” thing continues to blossom, it looks as if next year’s megawall will be integrating with none other than Twitter. Designed by Finland’s own MultiTouch, the Multitouch Twitter Wall will consist of “at least” six MultiTouch Cell 46 displays, each of which checks in at 46-inches wide. The whole shebang will offer onlookers at the show the ability to open tweets, move them around and give them a perfect opportunity to blow off steam while having their minds blitzed by the sheer quantity of news associated with the #CES tag. We’ll be sure to give it a look once we touch down in the great southwest next month, but till then, you can get a taste by mashing play below. [Thanks, Andr
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With Gingerbread freely distributed to the open-source masses, it probably won’t surprise you to hear there already a hacked ROM for Google’s darling Nexus One . But what if we told you Android 2.3 is now available for the HTC HD2 as well? That’s right, the Windows Mobile 6.5 powerhouse can now snap off a sugary piece of the same Android code, and from what we hear in the XDA-developers forums, it works pretty decently, too. Like the Samsung Galaxy S we saw getting the green tie treatment this morning, the HTC HD2 and Nexus One don’t exactly have stable, fully functional builds, but as long as you know what you’re doing and don’t need petty luxuries like cameras, GPS receivers and official Google apps, you’ll probably be just fine. Find files and a modicum of instruction at our source links below. [Thanks to everyone who sent this in] HTC HD2 and Nexus One get some Gingerbread crumbs originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 18 Dec 2010 22:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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This RED EPIC belongs to Mark Pederson — the head of studio OffHollywood — who was apparently the very first one to drop $58,000 for the pre-production 5K camera , not to mention the first to lay down money for the original one . In case you’ve arranged to find yourself with a similarly jawdropping Christmas present in the mail, you can find pictures of what to expect at our source links below. The links will also do quite nicely if you haven’t experienced that feeling called “jealousy” in a while and would like a refresher course. [Thanks, Charlie and Patrick] First hand-machined RED EPIC ships, gets lovingly toyed with originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 18 Dec 2010 20:51:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Continue reading …Samsung pulls Froyo update for Bell’s Vibrant after reports of fried internal storage
December 18, 2010 No Comment
We have no idea why Samsung’s having such a hard time delivering its overdue promised Froyo upgrades worldwide for the Galaxy S series, but it’s not looking any easier for them this weekend: the only Canadian Galaxy S to get upgraded so far, Bell’s Vibrant, has just had its update pulled. Seems a healthy number of users attempting the upgrade using Sammy’s Kies desktop software ended up with inaccessible internal storage, which sucks for a variety of obvious reasons — and that would be the apparent reason for the removal of the update. Here’s the official statement: ” There have been intermittent issues reported during the firmware upgrade process with Kies for the Samsung Galaxy S i9000M series of phones. Samsung’s development team is currently aware of this issue and working towards a solution. Accordingly, The firmware update feature, which affects the ability to upgrade to Android 2.2, is temporarily disabled until a solution is released. We apologize for the inconvenience.” Maybe we can just go straight to Gingerbread or Honeycomb at this point? [Thanks to everyone who sent this in] Samsung pulls Froyo update for Bell’s Vibrant after reports of fried internal storage originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 18 Dec 2010 19:47:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Continue reading …Wall Street Journal says apps may violate privacy, fingers MySpace and Pandora
December 18, 2010 No Comment
You might have heard how careless some third-party apps can be with your personal data, but it may not yet have hit home — offenders can include must-have programs like MySpace and Pandora, too. The Wall Street Journal tested 101 popular apps for iPhone and Android and discovered that over half transmitted unique device identifiers (UDID) to a flock of advertisers without so much as a prompt, and that some (including Pandora) even transmitted a user’s age, gender and location to better target their marks. Now, before you boycott your favorite music apps, you might want to hear the other side of the story, which is that all this data is typically processed in batches and anonymized so that advertisers can’t necessarily separate you from the crowd. However, the worry is that there may be little stopping nefarious individuals from creating a database that links your UDID to all this other data you send out. It’s a juicy proposition for targeted advertising, sure, but also potentially real-world crime, so we doubt this will be the last we hear of UDID privacy scares. Wall Street Journal says apps may violate privacy, fingers MySpace and Pandora originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 18 Dec 2010 18:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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