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- BMW unveils new i3 and revamped i8 concepts, we await our automotive future (video)
- Insert Coin: YouTurn accelerometer-based turn signal system for cyclists
- Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9 Retail Mode app makes its debut on a Galaxy Tab 10.1 (video)
- RZA unveils branded headphone line, hopes you don't leave Shaolin without them
- CNC machine carves dot drawing portraits for your living room walls
- LED coffee table busts a multicolored move (video)
- Razer's Electra headphones pump out bass, keep your voice 'inline' for $60
- Google wants to speed up your site, while resisting the urge to sell you stuff
- Google refines search experience for big-fingered tablet owners
- iPhone 4 gets upgraded for NFC payments the hard way
- LauncherPro dev's skinnable UberMusic player finally hits the Android Market
- IDC: Nokia, LG see significant Q2 shipping decline, Apple continues to grow
- Engadget's next reader meetup happens in NYC on August 25th!
- Engadget Primed: are multi-core chips worth the investment?
- AT&T announces throttling plans, gently reminds us why the T-Mobile acquisition is so great
- Sony VAIO Z review (2011)
- Leica D-Lux 5 gets the deluxe Colorware treatment
- System Administrator Appreciation Day is here, show them some love (or suffer the consequences)
- Zinio 2.0 for iPad adds in-app purchasing, free article preview (video)
- Growing Up Geek: Brian Heater
- 3D-printed plane takes to the skies, sounds like a Black & Decker (video)
- Engadget Podcast 250 - 07.29.2011
- Google launches Hotel Finder, finds a way to recycle Google Maps reviews
- Duke University's underwater invisibility cloak stills troubled waters
- Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet gets an August 23rd release
- Qriocity video streaming coming to Xperia packing pocket near you
- ASUS Eee Pad Slider priced in Portuguese catalog, manhandled on camera (video)
- Fusion Garage's Grid 10 tablet clears the FCC, begs us not to call it the 'JooJoo 2'
- XBee grows up, delivers WiFi to DIYers and Arduino enthusiasts
- HP tells developers to start submitting apps for Pre 3, still on track for summer launch?
- British judge doesn't like the cut of Newzbin 2's jib, orders BT to block it
- Google's Music Beta gives users two invites, keys to the cloud for their best mates
- Think Geek's Electric Guitar Bag holds your laptop, lets you 'rock' the commute
- Alibaba announces 'cloud-powered' Aliyun OS, K-Touch W700 phone
- Trojan asteroid caught circling Earth, the Greeks deny involvement
- Cellphones are dangerous / not dangerous: little tykes under the spotlight
- Spotify sued by PacketVideo for patent infringement
- Toshiba promises cure for Thrive's sleep disorder 'early next week'
- Caltech researchers devise acoustic diode that sends sound one-way, could harvest energy
- Dell Streak 10 Pro vs. Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1... fight!
| BMW unveils new i3 and revamped i8 concepts, we await our automotive future (video) Posted: 30 Jul 2011 11:42 AM PDT  The i8, which you'll recall for its radical aerodynamic design and hybrid diesel-electric drivetrain, has received a bevy of aerodynamic tweaks and junked its oil burner, opting for a gasoline one instead. Engine swap aside, the sporty coupé apparently drinks only 2.7 liters per 100km -- 87 mpg (!) for yanks -- which is unreal in a car that'll accelerate to 62mph in 4.6 seconds. Sound too good to be true? We'll have to wait until 2014 to see if München can make good on those promises, but in the meantime feel free to peruse the galleries, videos, and PR after the break. BMW Group presents mobility of the future +++ World premiere of the BMW i3 Concept and BMW i8 Concept +++ Reithofer: A milestone in the history of the company +++ Sustainability across the entire value added chain Frankfurt a.M. / Munich. The BMW Group showcases its visions of future mobility in the shape of the BMW i3 Concept and BMW i8 Concept studies. Unveiled for the first time, these concept vehicles provide a glimpse of the first electrically powered production cars from the new BMW i sub-brand, due to be launched as the BMW i3 in 2013 and the BMW i8 in 2014. "We are marking another milestone in the history of the BMW Group. As Chairman of the Board and an engineer myself, I am very proud of this project," declared Norbert Reithofer, Chairman of the Board of Management of BMW AG, at Friday's premiere of the two vehicles in Frankfurt. "As the world's leading premium car manufacturer, our aim is to offer customers purpose-built electric-drive cars as well," he added. With its zero-emission electric drive and a range of approximately 150 kilometres, the BMW i3 Concept has been specifically developed for use in an urban environment, its dynamic 125 kW electric motor and rear-wheel drive ensuring BMW-style dynamic handling. Thanks to its innovative LifeDrive architecture featuring a carbon passenger cell, the BMW i3 Concept combines an extremely low weight of 1,250 kilograms with optimal interior space and the highest crash safety levels. With four seats and a 200-litre luggage compartment, this vehicle is fully suited for everyday use. Draeger: a revolution in car design "This vehicle will mark the launch of the first volume-produced car featuring bodywork largely made of carbon. It's a revolution in automotive design," stressed Klaus Draeger, Member of the Board responsible for Development. The application of this new CFRP technology allows a weight reduction, compared to a conventional electric car, of between 250 and 350 kilos, and that means more dynamic handling coupled with a greater range. The BMW i3 does the 0 to 100 km/h sprint in less than eight seconds, while a high-speed charger achieves an 80% battery charge in just an hour. Thanks to the emission-free drivetrain and a value added chain designed to be sustainable all along the line, life cycle emission figures for the BMW i3 are at least a third lower than for a highly efficient combustion-engine car. If the BMW i3 is run on electricity from renewable sources, the figures improve by well over 50%. BMW i8 Concept: new-generation sports car The BMW i8 Concept goes from 0 to 100 km/h in less than five seconds and boasts fuel consumption of under three litres per 100 km. Its plug-in hybrid drive with a system output of 260 kW allows a range of up to 35 kilometres in electric mode – sufficient for most everyday journeys. For more dynamic driving or out-of-town routes, a high-performance three-cylinder petrol engine also comes into play. The sports car has an electronically governed top speed of 250 km/h and space for up to four occupants. "The BMW i8 Concept is the sports car for a new generation – pure, emotional and sustainable," Draeger underlined. With BMW i, the BMW Group is corroborating its position as the most innovative and sustainable auto manufacturer in the world, as reflected in the fact that it has been the supersector leader in the Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes for the sixth year running. With BMW i, the BMW Group is providing answers to the mobility challenges of the future while pursuing a holistic approach. In addition to purpose-built premium vehicles with electric drive, the company is also offering intelligent mobility services. The focus here is on solutions for improved use of parking space, intelligent navigation systems with location-based information, intermodal route planning and car-sharing schemes such as DriveNow. Following MyCityWay, ParkatmyHouse marks the second investment by the recently launched venture capital company BMW i Ventures in a company providing internet-based mobility services. Parkatmyhouse allows private individuals to use the internet or smartphone app to rent out their private parking spaces on a short- or long-term basis. Both the BMW i3 and the BMW i8 will be built at BMW's Leipzig plant in Germany. Some 400 million euros are earmarked for investment in new buildings and facilities by 2013, while 800 new jobs are to be created. Vehicle production will be CO2 neutral and will draw on renewable resources. The company is currently investigating the possibility of erecting its own wind turbines on the plant site. The BMW Group The BMW Group is one of the most successful manufacturers of automobiles and motorcycles in the world with its BMW, MINI and Rolls-Royce brands. As a global company, the BMW Group operates 25 production and assembly facilities in 14 countries and has a global sales network in more than 140 countries. During the financial year 2010, the BMW Group sold 1.46 million cars and more than 110,000 motorcycles worldwide. The profit before tax for 2010 was euro 4.8 billion on revenues amounting to euro 60.5 billion. At 31 December 2010, the BMW Group had a workforce of approximately 95,500 employees. The success of the BMW Group has always been built on long-term thinking and responsible action. The company has therefore established ecological and social sustainability throughout the value chain, comprehensive product responsibility and a clear commitment to conserving resources as an integral part of its strategy. As a result of its efforts, the BMW Group has been ranked industry leader in the Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes for the last six years. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Insert Coin: YouTurn accelerometer-based turn signal system for cyclists Posted: 30 Jul 2011 09:00 AM PDT In Insert Coin, we look at an exciting new tech project that requires funding before it can hit production. If you'd like to pitch a project, please send us a tip with "Insert Coin" as the subject line.  Many of us who bike in the city ride in constant fear of being tapped by a taxi cab, or crushed by a bus. There's no way to completely eradicate the risk of being run over by a much larger motorized vehicle, but making yourself easily visible -- both at night and during the day -- can certainly make a difference. Smart cyclists use hand signals long before they need to make a turn, but the YouTurn signal system aims to make those indicators difficult for drivers to miss, with an accelerometer-based gadget that illuminates an arrow in the direction of your turn. If you want to turn left, for example, simply point your hand to the left, and the device will flash a giant yellow chevron. The prototype you'll see in the video below is integrated with a glove, though the final version will simply attach to the back of your hand, and can be stored in a bag when you're not on your bike. There's no mention of durability or waterproofing, though since the inventor's objective is to enhance safety, we imagine he'll be taking precautions to avoid electrocution in the rain. YouTurn inventory Jack O'Neal launched a Kickstarter page to help fund his project, and is accepting preorders at $50 a pop. There's no final pricing listed at this point, but at 50 bucks for a first-run YouTurn, we were happy to make the pledge. We hope to see O'Neal meet his funding goal and send these to production, but until then, we'll keep looking both ways and hoping for the best. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9 Retail Mode app makes its debut on a Galaxy Tab 10.1 (video) Posted: 30 Jul 2011 07:33 AM PDT  Still yearning to find out when the Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9 will be released worldwide? Aside from Sammy's previously announced September release for the Nordic areas, there's been no other official word on when the rest of us can get our mitts on one -- not to mention that a month's time has passed since the AT&T-banded 3G Galaxy Tab 8.9 hit the FCC. It appears that we'll know more soon though, as Samsung's apparently slipped out a new "app" that serves as a demo Retail Mode for the upcoming slate. Reportedly, once the store mode is downloaded from Samsung Apps and installed, using the password "5444" will grant you the access needed to get it running on a current Galaxy Tab. You'll find a video of the TouchWiz filled demo after the break, but don't get to excited yet; it's running on the 10.1-incher. Patience, friends. Patience. [Thanks, Will] | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| RZA unveils branded headphone line, hopes you don't leave Shaolin without them Posted: 30 Jul 2011 06:11 AM PDT  | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| CNC machine carves dot drawing portraits for your living room walls Posted: 30 Jul 2011 03:33 AM PDT  | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| LED coffee table busts a multicolored move (video) Posted: 30 Jul 2011 12:44 AM PDT  | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Razer's Electra headphones pump out bass, keep your voice 'inline' for $60 Posted: 29 Jul 2011 10:52 PM PDT  Are you a gamer and bass-lover on a tight budget looking for a new headset? Razer's Electra headphones might just be your ticket for dubstepping through your next WoW raid. These stereo cans sport a 40mm driver in each earcup tuned to pump out lows, along with leatherette earpads to help keep 'em comfortable while aiding in passive noise isolation. To sweeten the deal, you'll also get two detachable cables, one of which has an inline mic; perfect for on-the-go phone calls while your heading to 7-11 for Slurpee-fuel, or a bit of TeamSpeaking when your Carcharias get lost. The Electras will be available come this October, but if you can't get past the green highlights we don't blame ya. Full PR past the break. Prepare for Electrifying Audio With the Razer Electra Razer empowers gaming enthusiasts with the Razer Electra headphones for gaming audio and music on the go CARLSBAD, Calif., July 27, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Razer, the world's leading high-end precision gaming brand, takes your thumping music beats and exciting game audio to the streets with the Razer Electra slick headphones designed to deliver powerful bass depth and crisp clear soundstages in a comfortable and versatile package. Whether gamers are flinging birds, pwning monsters, or running gauntlets on their smartphones, tablets, or netbooks, the demand for enriching gaming experiences with exceptional audio is undeniable. The Razer Electra provides just that with deep, booming bass and balanced sound delivered by audio drivers finely tuned to low frequencies. While out on the streets or in the subway, noise can be a major hindrance to your listening pleasure. Enter the Razer Electra, featuring optimally positioned ear cups and thick leatherette ear cushions that mold to the shape of your ears to block out the bad stuff and keep the good vibrations in. Also built with a flexible headband structure and lightweight frame to provide long-lasting comfort over extended play, the Razer Electra keeps the awesome soundtrack to your life pumping full force. "When true gamers step away from their computers, they don't stop gaming," said Robert "RazerGuy" Krakoff, President, Razer USA. "The Razer Electra was designed to be the gamer's trusty audio sidekick, powering their favorite songs and intensifying mobile games with deeper bass and richer sounds." About the Razer Electra gaming and music headphones Electrify your life through the power of sound with the Razer Electra. Slick headphones built to deliver exciting gaming audio and music, the Razer Electra allows you to hit the streets with sick bass drop and a balanced sound thanks to finely tuned drivers in each ear cup. Enjoy the music and forget the noise as the Razer Electra was designed with optimally positioned ear cups and thick leatherette ear cushions that mold to the shape of your ears for enhanced sound isolation. With a flexible headband structure and lightweight frame, you're assured of long-lasting comfort over extended play. Kick your audio on-the-go up a notch, with the Razer Electra. Product Features: Enhanced bass response with optimized drivers Replaceable sound-isolating leatherette ear cushions Flexible headband structure and snug-fit ear cups for extended comfort Detachable rubber sheathed audio cable Detachable inline microphone audio cable for voice communication For more information about the Razer Electra, please visit www.razerzone.com/electra Price: US $59.99 / EU euro 59.99 Availability: Razerzone.com – October 2011 – Register your interest now! Worldwide – October 2011 About the Razer Group: Razer™ is more than just the world's leading brand in high-end precision gaming products, perpetually defining the gaming and technology space. Founded in 1998 in Carlsbad, California, Razer is driven by the ceaseless pursuit for absolute precision and high usability in a distinctive, aesthetic design that will give gamers the edge they demand. With labs and offices in eight cities around the world, Razer dedicates user interface research and development to bring cutting-edge technology to each and every product. We live by our motto: For Gamers. By Gamers.™ For more information, please visit www.razerzone.com Razer - For Gamers. By Gamers.™ | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Google wants to speed up your site, while resisting the urge to sell you stuff Posted: 29 Jul 2011 09:23 PM PDT  | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Google refines search experience for big-fingered tablet owners Posted: 29 Jul 2011 07:12 PM PDT  | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| iPhone 4 gets upgraded for NFC payments the hard way Posted: 29 Jul 2011 05:37 PM PDT  | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| LauncherPro dev's skinnable UberMusic player finally hits the Android Market Posted: 29 Jul 2011 04:08 PM PDT  | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| IDC: Nokia, LG see significant Q2 shipping decline, Apple continues to grow Posted: 29 Jul 2011 03:34 PM PDT  Worldwide Mobile Phone Market Grew More Than 11% in the Second Quarter; Feature Phones Decline for First Time in Almost 2 Years, According to IDC 28 Jul 2011 FRAMINGHAM, Mass. July 28, 2011 – The worldwide mobile phone market grew 11.3% year over year in the second quarter of 2011 (2Q11), despite a weaker feature phone market, which declined for the first time since 3Q09. According to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Mobile Phone Tracker, vendors shipped 365.4 million units in 2Q11 compared to 328.4 million units in the second quarter of 2010. The 11.3% growth was lower than IDC's forecast of 13.3% for the quarter and was also below the 16.8% growth in 1Q11. The feature phone market shrank 4% in 2Q11 when compared to 2Q10. The decline in shipments was most prominent in economically mature regions, such as the United States, Japan, and Western Europe, as users rapidly transition to smartphones. This was the first decline since Q3 2009 and reflected a combination of conservative spending and continued shift to smartphones. "The shrinking feature phone market is having the greatest impact on some of the world's largest suppliers of mobile phones," said Kevin Restivo, senior research analyst with IDC's Worldwide Mobile Phone Tracker. "Stalwarts such as Nokia are losing share in the feature phone category to low-cost suppliers such as Micromax, TCL-Alcatel, and Huawei." "For the overall market to grow by double digits year over year, despite the decline in feature phones, is testament to the strength of the global smartphone market," noted Ramon Llamas, senior research analyst with IDC's Mobile Phone Technology and Trends team. "While this is not a new trend – smartphones have been the primary engine of growth for the last several quarters – it does mark something of a transition point, as demonstrated by the growing number and variety of smartphones featured in the vendors' portfolios." Market Outlook The feature phone forecast isn't expected to be any rosier in the quarters and years to come. Shipment growth of the device type won't exceed 1.1% in any year forecasted by IDC. Regional Analysis The traditionally slow second quarter in Asia/Pacific was exacerbated by Nokia's channel inventory corrections in China. Apple thrived in China thanks to strong iPhone 4 demand. As well, a number of domestic brands in Southeast Asia like CSL, Nexian, Q-Mobile, and Wellcom grew sales of Android-powered smartphones. China-based vendors gained share in India and Southeast Asia at the low end. In Japan, the impact of the earthquake continued into April and May as component shortages forced manufacturers to release new models in June while customer demand was harder to fulfill. In Western Europe, the market declined sequentially compared to the first quarter. The feature phone market declined while smartphone shipment growth slowed as phone makers and carriers reduced inventories in advance of expected third-quarter product launches. Feature phone dependent suppliers were not able to offset feature phone weakness completely with higher smartphone sales. The CEMA markets performed well on a year-over-year basis despite civil unrest in Egypt and other Arab countries, where sales were negatively impacted as a result. Samsung gained share while Chinese brands continued to make inroads in the region. In North America, smartphones once again took center stage, propelled by lower prices, key device launches, and enhanced channel marketing. In particular, Android-based devices extended their lead in the United States and took leadership in Canada thanks to Samsung, Motorola, HTC, and LG. Meanwhile, demand for feature phones continued to slide, but there still existed pockets of interest for voice-centric and quick-messaging devices. Still, as the region heads towards a smartphone-centric future, IDC expects feature phones to represent an increasingly smaller portion of the market. The Latin America market growth was driven by low-cost smartphones, specifically those with social networking features. Lower smartphone prices, including those of the Android variety, are driving smartphone penetration in several Latin American countries. Price is expected to be a point of differentiation – as well as applications and device features – between Android players in future. Top Five Mobile Phone Vendors Nokia's hold on the top global mobile phone spot weakened last quarter as inventory buildups in traditional strongholds, namely China and Europe, led to sharp year-over-year shipment declines. Nokia's global feature phone and smartphone businesses suffered a similar fate. One positive sign for Nokia last quarter were dual-SIM devices; the company shipped over 2.6 million of these in the second quarter. Over the long term, Nokia's smartphone fortunes will be dictated by its ability to sell Windows Phone 7 smartphone devices, which are expected to hit the market this year. It is Nokia's primary smartphone platform of the future. In the meantime, Nokia is trying to sustain shipment volume with low-cost mobile phones and devices powered by the aging Symbian smartphone platform. Samsung posted double-digit growth from the same quarter a year ago, and just slightly slower growth than the overall pace of the market. Like other vendors it realized a decrease in demand for its feature phones, but made up the difference with continued success for its Android-based Galaxy smartphones. The difference between Samsung and market leader Nokia continued to shrink, with less than 20 million units separating the two vendors, mostly resulting from Nokia's struggles in the market. Still, Samsung expects continued growth into the second half, which could put it in closer contention with Nokia. LG Electronics held on to its number three position during the quarter, thanks in part to its Optimus smartphone sales worldwide. However, a combination of factors – including soft demand for its feature phones, slow pace of smartphone releases, and competitive pressures, led the company to downgrade its outlook for the year by 24%. Originally, LG had anticipated flat growth in 2011 from 2010 levels, even as it expected the overall market to increase by 8%. Should LG's volumes decrease as much as it anticipates, other vendors may jockey for position ahead of LG. Apple maintained its number four position overall but closed the gap on Top 5 competitors thanks to another record unit shipment quarter. The company easily posted the highest growth rate of the worldwide leaders despite the fact that its flagship iPhone 4 is now more than a year old. The triple-digit shipment volume growth allowed Apple to more than double its share when compared to the same quarter last year. Apple's ability to bring its smartphone momentum to developing economies, where it's less successful, will help dictate the company's smartphone fortunes in future. ZTE likewise improved volumes and picked up market share during the quarter, enough to maintain the number five position. Long known as a purveyor of simple, voice-centric mobile phones, ZTE has stepped up its smartphone game with the continued success of its Android-powered Blade and Racer smartphones while announcing Libra, Skate, and Amigo smartphones for release in the second half of this year. Feature phones continued to be popular for ZTE, with the release of its 547i, a social networking-centric device in Europe. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Engadget's next reader meetup happens in NYC on August 25th! Posted: 29 Jul 2011 03:00 PM PDT  We'll have more posts with more details in the coming weeks as we get closer to the day in question, but if you're a member of the media who would like to attend, an exhibitor who wants to show something off to the fans, or a sponsor who wants to be a part of the insanity (readers, hold tight!), please e-mail us at meetup at engadget dot com. Until then! | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Engadget Primed: are multi-core chips worth the investment? Posted: 29 Jul 2011 02:15 PM PDT Primed goes in-depth on the technobabble you hear on Engadget every day -- we dig deep into each topic's history and how it benefits our lives. Looking to suggest a piece of technology for us to break down? Drop us a line at primed *at* engadget *dawt* com.  Let's not get too far ahead of ourselves here, however. After all, we first need to wrap our puny human minds around the idea of what this newfound power can do, and why it's changing the entire landscape of smartphones and tablets. In this edition of Primed, we'll focus on why multicore technology makes such a difference in the way we use our handheld devices, whether we should even consider purchasing a handset with a single-core chip inside, and why one-core tech is so 2010. Check out the whole enchilada after the break. Table of Contents
 First, let's get the brass tacks out of the way. A core, in its basic terminology, is a distinct CPU. Any singular core is capable of executing all of the necessary computations and instructions to ensure a smartphone can function at all. Until the last year or so, one core is all we really needed in a mobile device; there simply wasn't enough demand on the processor to need that much more performance. However, software became more complex, operating systems added more functionality, and mobile applications exploded in popularity. New phones can conduct video conferences, play graphics-intensive games, record video in 1080p, and multitask dozens of apps at once. These activities leave our phones with no hope of keeping up with our daily grind. Chipmakers were able to crank out processors with faster clock speeds and slightly lower nanometer counts (more on that later), but they were quickly approaching a wall: these CPUs, if made any more powerful, would become too inefficient for use in a smartphone or tablet without making it large enough to carry cooling units. In a day and age where phonemakers are competing for the title of "world's thinnest phone," processors must be able to accommodate them while boosting performance simultaneously. A chip with any higher clock speed or cache -- remaining confined to the same small space -- would not only obliterate battery life, it would make the phone too hot to operate due to the overwhelming amount of thermal heat dissipating from it. Luckily, desktop chipsets went through a similar conundrum five or six years ago. Single-core CPUs hit a point where boosting clock speeds became too inefficient. Instead of trying to bump up the capacity of one processor, the next logical step was to add more of them and split the difference. With this feat of engineering, the multicore era was born; given the rapid influx of smartphone capacity, it was only a matter of time before mobile devices followed the same path.
Multicore is swooping in to save the day. Let's say you're having a rough time at work; there's deadlines to keep and the mounds of paperwork continue to pile up, and fears of getting behind are growing. How much easier would the job become if you have someone else sharing half of the workload with you? What if both of you specialize in different areas? This is an illustration of what multicore chipsets aim to do: with extra processing cores, your device's tasks can be split up and managed much more efficiently. A dual-core chip typically consists of two identical microprocessors living side-by-side on the same die. In a multicore system, each individual processor can tackle separate duties. If you're running a streaming audio app while simultaneously catching up on Engadget news in the web browser, one core can now be dedicated to each specific responsibility, allowing for a faster and smoother experience not only in your multimedia and browser, but in all of your phone's basic functions as well. When using a phone with a single core CPU, have you ever noticed that basic processes and requests offer a fluid and smooth response -- until you try watching a video or opening a MP3 file? As additional jobs get tossed into the pipeline (queues that schedule / prioritize each necessary task and tell the processor in which order to do everything), it bogs the processor down because it can only perform one task at a time. By having extra cores at the OS's disposal, it allows core A to handle the multimedia while core B is freed to focus on the basic functions that keep the phone running smoothly. Some requests handled by our CPU can be complex tasks consisting of multiple steps. These can take forever if only one processor's involved, because each task has to be completed one-by-one. On a dual-core device, however, both cores employ the age-old strategy of teamwork to handle the duty faster. This is what multithreading can do to help -- multiple streams of data now have more than one outlet to push through, increasing the processing time and efficiency. Dual-core is more battery efficient It should make sense by now why having multiple cores sharing the same workload would be a more efficient means of processing tasks on your phone. Not only does this make multitasking much less of a nightmare, it adds to your total battery life. A 1GHz dual-core chip (where both cores are 1GHz each) that splits up the assigned tasks would only need to run at half its maximum clocking speed; the reduced speed of each core will result in the same -- if not slightly better -- performance and lower power requirements. Lower frequencies result in less mandated voltage, and the consequential reduction of power is reduced by the square of the voltage decrease.  Most modern chipsets are designed to work with the platform's built-in task scheduler to ensure the CPU's running at the most optimal speed and voltage. When your device only has to worry about sustaining a few apps or basic processes, and only requires a small amount of processing power, there's no point in keeping both cores clocked out at 1GHz each. Doing so causes the phone to undergo a large amount of idle time, so the CPU ideally will minimize its output to match what the system requires in order to maximize battery life. In fact, some phones give you the opportunity to determine a CPU's current clock speed, as well as its absolute minimum and maximum. If you own an Android device, one such application that can measure these stats is Quadrant Standard, a benchmark we mentioned in our last Primed. By selecting "system information," the app will give you a full rundown of what speed your CPU's working at currently and its upper / lower capacity. Of course, chipmakers are doing everything possible on their end to assure higher power efficiency, but the software it runs on needs to be optimized -- both from the OS and individual apps. There's a massive amount of complexities involved when coding for multi-core devices; in most cases the OS is already optimized (Android, a Linux-based platform, has been this way practically since its inception), so any additional battery life savings are left to the devs. If developers don't know how to code for proper multithreading, their app could ultimately suck the battery dry in no time at all because it's still reliant on stuffing everything down one pipe. Since dual-core hasn't been around too long, it's likely we'll see mammoth increases in this category as devs learn to adjust to the new chips. Sadly, we don't get the option of dictating how our CPUs run -- manufacturers make their chips smart enough to automatically adjust clock speeds, reallocate resources to handle pre-determined tasks, and do anything else necessary to optimize your phone's performance. This likely is for our benefit, since we'd likely just tinker with the settings and cause the phone to either underwork or overwork if we don't know what we're doing. Additionally, with dev coding already so advanced, user-adjustable CPUs would simply toss on an extra layer of complexity. So while we'd love to have the option of turning off specific cores and reallocating resources to however we see fit, chipmakers have at least found the most ideal way to manage our power consumption for now. Dual-core is faster Many chipmakers elect to run their CPUs as part of a SoC -- a system-on-chip -- which saves money and consolidates space inside the phone by including several elements of a phone's processing power onto one integrated circuit. For instance, NVIDIA's Tegra 2 throws several "purpose-built cores" in: an eight-core GeForce GPU, a core designed specially for audio, two cores for video encoding / decoding, and myriads of other cores that specialize in one form or another. By keeping these essential elements together on one SoC, it takes much less time and energy for everything to talk to each other.  Many popular websites feature ActiveX / JavaScript content, embedded video, and various other forms of multimedia. In a single-core system, that lonely CPU not only bears the load of processing the site's content, video decoding, Flash content, and anything else related to the browser, it also is required to handle everything going on in the background -- Facebook and Twitter streams, the phone app (which is constantly pinging the cell tower), messaging, calendars, and anything else. The heavy burden has the poor core overworked; it's running at the absolute maximum frequency, it's slowing the rest of the phone down, and it's gobbling up battery life for breakfast. Below is a demonstration of the speed difference between a dual-core and single-core. Faster multitasking and UI response Smooth multitasking on a single-core device can bring lackluster results. What good does it do to have 40 apps running in the background if it takes 30 seconds to pull one of them up and begin using it? Like we mentioned earlier, the more tasks you stuff into the pipeline, the longer it takes for the processor to crank through them all. Indeed, everything suffers as a result. Touch responsiveness typically gets hit hard in this kind of situation. Since user interaction is inherently latent as it is, further delays in processing time are inevitable when multitasking. Single-core CPUs, when being fully utilized, cannot immediately switch over to get these specific tasks taken care of. Indeed, in a dual-core system, one core can specifically work on these basic user tasks while the other tackles more intensive jobs, allowing for faster and smoother multitasking and bringing back a more immediate response to your touch gestures. Dual-core offers a better gaming experience Have you ever wondered why you can't play console-quality games on your phone? Unfortunately, a chipset with this capability of handling advanced graphics of that degree hasn't been brought to market yet (fret not, they're on their way), but dual-core SoCs at least allow for a better gaming experience. Multi-core technology is at the root of our most advanced gaming consoles. The Xbox 360, for instance, is outfitted with three 3.2GHz PowerPC cores and a 500MHz ATI GPU with 10MB of embedded DRAM. When we compare this setup to that found on our phones, it's no wonder we still have a long ways to go. But we're getting closer; today's mobile game engines are now fitted with multithreading to take advantage of the constantly evolving CPUs that're running them. These engines have reduced the size of individual tasks that the processor has to work through, and increased the number of threads to enable the CPU to push through more jobs simultaneously. Allowing the game's AI to run on a separate processor as the rendering lends to a much smoother gameplay with better graphics. Taking a look at the Adreno roadmap below, it's not far-fetched to think that our phones and tablets will be up to par with current gaming consoles:  Many of the dual-core chipsets on market now offer a quality gaming environment that's comparable with the last generation of consoles. Qualcomm claims its Adreno 2xx series (found in this year's Snapdragon chips) brings game performance similar to the PlayStation 2 and the Nintendo Wii, Tegra 2 chips offer an ultra-low power GeForce GPU with eight cores to do the heavy lifting on the graphics, and Apple says the PowerVR SGX 543MP2 GPU found in its A5 SoC is nine times as powerful as the A4. What else does an extra core offer? Besides offering a better battery, faster loading, multithreading and improved gaming, we saw a lot of new functionality come to our phones over the last year, and multi-core tech is largely to thank. 1080p video playback and capture, glasses-free 3D technology, improved speech recognition and language processing, improved multimedia, higher-resolution displays, and many more features are much easier to accomplish using dual-core capabilities -- and as we start piling on more cores, it'll get even better. Frankly, most of these features can be utilized on a single-core chip, but they're done so at the expense of overall performance. When this additional functionality is used, the processor simply can't do everything at once -- it has to prioritize, and ends up getting overworked in the end. This is why we seldom see phones do this; a few more gimmicky features aren't worth putting your handset's reputation in jeopardy. I don't do much on my phone, so dual-core's not for me. There's a few reasons why it makes sense to stick with a single-core device... for now, at least. The biggest one is cost. If you're using your smartphone as a glorified calculator and planner, you're likely not going to see a measurable difference in performance. Why pay a premium price associated with the extra core? Another reason, which we'll talk more at length about in the next section, is that the most powerful single-core chips on the market still have a higher clock speed than most dual-cores. But not for long -- we'll soon begin seeing multi-core chipsets clocking at 2GHz or higher. Unless cost is a significant factor, there are very few ways to benefit from a single-core device.
The most visible measurement of a CPU's power and worth is its clock speed. Most midrange to high-end smartphones won't settle these days for anything less than 1GHz, though this number hasn't increased much further. Once single-core chips began reaching the 1.2-1.5GHz threshold, it was virtually impossible to continue boosting this particular number any higher without making the phone overheat too much; what's more, dual-core chips are typically at a lower clock speed than the highest-performing singles. What gives?
Quad-core  A few companies (such as NVIDIA and Qualcomm) have introduced quad-core chipsets that should be available for sampling sometime later this year, and will likely appear in mobile devices at some point in 2012. If this year's been any indication, there's a good chance we'll see Tegra 3 -- aka Kal-El -- come to market first. The transition to quad-core will give another massive boost in performance altogether. Additional cores will enable our phones to handle even more of a workload, which means we can start looking forward to console-quality gaming, an exponential increase in speed, even higher-res displays, 1440p video playback, improvements in speech recognition, and lower power consumption (to name a few). Will quad-core devices will make our current high-end handsets look turtle-slow?
It's time to look at the bottom line. Is it worth investing in a phone or tablet with a dual-core, high-performance CPU? The answer isn't as cut and dried as we'd like it to be, but your daily grind should be a strong indicator of what your ROI will be. If all your smartphone is being used for is some basic emailing, web surfing and texting, it's probably not worth the difference in cost to go with a better processor at this point in time -- the difference won't be that significant. But if you're constantly using your handheld device for work, play, and everything in between, you'll want to take advantage of the higher performance with better yields in battery life. As you can see, the landscape of mobile processing technology is constantly evolving. Agree with Moore's Law or not, dual-core will quickly become mainstream, and quad-core chips are likely to grace high-end devices sometime in 2012. How long will it be before cost really isn't a factor anymore? Hard to say -- for all we know, by this time next year we may be writing about single-core devices in our history e-textbooks. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| AT&T announces throttling plans, gently reminds us why the T-Mobile acquisition is so great Posted: 29 Jul 2011 02:03 PM PDT 
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| Posted: 29 Jul 2011 01:30 PM PDT  Well, it's here. The 2011 VAIO Z is, indeed, thinner, lighter, and more powerful. It also might not be the Z you were expecting. Whereas the last generation combined it all, cramming in an optical drive and switchable graphics, this year's model leaves much of that at the door -- or, at least, in an external dock that ships with the laptop. This time around, the Z has no optical drive, and packs just an integrated Intel graphics card on board. (Don't worry, it does squeeze in lots of other goodies, including standard-voltage Sandy Bridge processors and expanded solid-state storage.) If you want that Blu-ray burner or the stock AMD Radeon HD 6650M graphics card, you'll have to plug into the Power Media Dock, an external peripheral that uses Intel's Light Peak technology. That's quite the gamble Sony is taking -- after all, the company is essentially betting that you won't need to do anything too intensive while you're on the go. On the one hand, this inventive design is sure to intrigue the Z's usual early adopter fanbase. But will it satisfy those who always liked the Z because of its no-compromise design? And then there's the issue of that $1,969 starting price, a likely stumbling block for people trying to decide between this and an equally thin, less expensive ultraportable. What's a well-heeled geek to do? Let's find out. Look and feelThe last time we reviewed the VAIO Z, we didn't have a whole lot to say about the design -- after all, the company didn't muck around much with the Z that came before that. This time around, the Z got a facelift and a touch of liposuction -- a makeover that's left it half a pound lighter and a whole lot flatter. As we mentioned, Sony gutted the Z so that it no longer houses an optical drive or dual graphics cards. Because of that, it was able to knock the weight down to an absurdly light 2.57 pounds (1.2kg) and whittle the thickness from one inch (25.4mm) to just six tenths of an inch (15.24mm). And when we say 0.6 inches, we mean at its thinnest and thickest point. That's right, this is a pancake-flat laptop the whole way through -- a departure from the deceptive wedge shape you'll see on scads of other laptops. The result is one unbelievably light notebook -- the lightest 13-incher with a standard voltage processor, to be exact. It feels even less dense than some netbooks we've tested, and it makes Lenovo's 3.7-pound (1.7kg) ThinkPad X1, for one, seem unwieldy by comparison. And yes, for those of you who were wondering, it's also lighter than the 13-inch MacBook Air, which weighs in at 2.96 pounds (1.3kg). The Z is, of course, thicker, than either the Air or Samsung's 2.8-pound (1.3kg) Series 9. But the Z at least justifies its "heft," if you can even call it that: it houses a whole lot more I/O openings, including a headphone / mic port, an Ethernet jack, USB 2.0 and 3.0 sockets, VGA-out, and separate SD and Memory Stick slots. And that's not even counting the ones you'll find on the Power Media Dock, which we'll walk you through in just a moment.  But the cosmetic differences between this year's Z and the last-gen model don't stop at inches and pounds. Like many VAIOs of yesteryear, the last-gen model had a rounded hinge with the power button baked in, whereas this one has a sunken display that sits so low that it grazes the table when it's open. In fact, at first blush it looks like the Z's missing a hinge. The power button, meanwhile, sits on the upper-rightmost corner of the keyboard deck. (And yes, it still glows that familiar green.) When we first unboxed the Z we a bit disoriented, but the new arrangement looks slick and also serves a practical purpose -- that new dropped hinge gives the keyboard a nice, subtle tilt when the lid is open. Moving along, Sony also added a brushed metal strip to the the back edge of the lid -- an over-the-top touch for a machine that doesn't need to prove it's premium. That metal accent just doesn't jibe with Sony's typical laptop design, and screams, "I'm expensive!" Well, we knew that. Lift the lid, though, and the Z starts looking a bit more like its old self. There's the same island keyboard you know and love, and Sony hasn't ditched its commitment to physical buttons either. Above it, you'll find the tried-and-true WiFi switch, along with dedicated launch keys for VAIO Assist, VAIO Care, and a web browser of your choice. That strip above the 'board is a little less cluttered this time around, given that there's no lever for toggling between an integrated or discrete graphics card. The entire interior has a minimal look, even though there's a ridge near the palm rest that puts it on a slightly higher plane than the rest of the keyboard deck. Speaking of clean, the lid (available in black and an arresting indigo) did a good job of masking our fingerprints, even after a week of use. Also like the last generation, the Z is constructed out of aluminum and carbon fiber, which makes the whole thing feel solid, particularly when you hold it one hand. In conversations with Sony, we asked why it didn't opt for a scratch-resistant Gorilla Glass display, as Lenovo did with the X1. While the company didn't exactly give us a straight answer, it did say that it deliberately made the display flexible so that it would better respond to travel and all-purpose manhandling. Make of that what you will -- we can see the advantage to building in some leeway, though there's no question that the screen feels less sturdy than the rest of the machine. And that's not unique to the Z either -- we have a lower-end VAIO SB in house, and its screen, too, tends to wobble, Given that we've seen the lower and higher end of what Sony has to offer, we're inclined to say we'd expect a bit more from the machine that costs north of two grand. Keyboard and trackpad As common as Chiclet keyboards are today, Sony was one of the first to jump on the island-style bandwagon. That means it's had a lot of time to think about what makes a great typing experience: how bouncy should the keys be? How far apart should they sit, and to what extent, if any, can people tolerate shrunken Shift buttons? All told, we'd say Sony has landed a winning formula. The keys are well spaced, fairly quiet, and have a pleasant, soft finish. Like the last-generation, this year's Z has a backlit keyboard-- a touch we'd be shocked not to find in a premium system like this. And yet, while we made few spelling errors, the shallow keys didn't quite feel as comfy as other keyboards we've tested. The best analogy we can think of is what it's like to wear flip-flops. When you're wearing these shoes, which lack any kind of heel or arch support, you might notice your toes rolling into a claw. They push into the flip-flop, gripping the rubber to the extent that there's anything to grab. With the Z's keyboard, too, the keys are so short that there isn't much to latch onto. As we typed, we could feel ourselves bearing down on the keys with a bit more pressure than we'd normally apply. Even the MacBook Pro has slightly cushier keys -- and let's not even get started on the pillowy keyboard found on any ThinkPad. With bigger, more tactile keys like those, our hands fly over the keyboard -- they don't tense up because the buttons are simply easier to press. That said, in the grand scheme of things, the VAIO Z's keyboard is one of the sturdier and better arranged we've seen. In yet another design switcheroo, Sony opted for a buttonless trackpad this go 'round. We'll be honest, we've had mixed experiences with seamless touchpads -- though most use the same underlying Synaptics technology, laptop manufacturers implement it differently. In Sony's case, the touch experience is mostly pleasant, at least when it comes to just moving the cursor to and fro. The touchpad, which measures nearly three inches by one and a half (76.2 x 38.1mm), has a low-friction surface, while a raised, lizard-inspired pattern makes the tactile experience. The touch buttons are ever-so slightly stiff, but the real problem is that there's a hyper sensitive fingerprint reader wedged in the center. It's all too easy to accidentally tap it with your fingers, which causes unwanted dialog boxes to appear onscreen. We suggest disabling that, unless biometric sensors are your cup of tea. Other than that, our main complaint about the touchpad is that it chokes on two-fingered scrolling. At first it'll appear to work seamlessly. You'll feel in control as you page up and down through a document. It all works perfectly until... it doesn't. Intermittently, we had vexing moments when we had to press hard with our fingers to make scrolling work, or where we moved our digits up and down and nothing happened. Display and sound The 13.1-inch display on our test unit had 1920 x 1080 resolution, though the base model comes with a 1600 x 900 panel. One of the first things we noticed about the Z -- even before its impossibly light weight, perhaps -- is that if you look at the screen from the side it has an odd reddish tint. It's a shame, because the viewing angles from the sides are actually quite good. Head-on, fortunately, the display looks gorgeous, with white whites, black blacks, and no sign of that puzzling red overcast that troubled us from oblique angles. We're also happy to report that the viewing angles are equally excellent if you push the lid forward -- a real possibility if you intend to use this thing on a plane or commuter rail. While Sony's dished up one premium display, it dropped the ball as far as sound quality goes. The twin speakers deliver pretty weak volume and, what's more, the audio is pretty tinny. Not necessarily a more metallic sound than you'd get with any old notebook but remember, this isn't any old notebook. For two grand, we'd expect some deeper bass notes and volume loud enough to entertain a guest or twenty. Power Media Dock Here's the part you've been waiting for -- the thing that makes the Z look so peculiar in photos. The Power Media Dock -- and, with it, a completely different set of assumptions about how you're going touse your computer. This year's Z forgoes both the optical drive and discrete graphics card, and stuffs 'em both in a external drive, dubbed the Power Media Dock. The idea, simply put, is that you'll wait until you're plugged in to play Call of Duty: Black Ops and crunch 1080p video. The dock, which comes bundled with the Z, has an AMD Radeon HD 6650M card with 1GB of video memory, and uses Intel's Light Peak technology, the same basic standard uses to power Thunderbolt on Macs. As some of you might recall, Sony uses the USB port to implement Light Peak. So, the attached cable has an odd, two-pronged connector, which plugs into the AC port and the adjacent USB 3.0 port. Once you plug it in, you'll see the screen flicker briefly, along with an onscreen dialog box acknowledging, essentially, that you're now cooking with butter. The cool thing about that is setup, of course, is that when you're not hooked up to the dock, you can instead use that port with USB 2.0 or 3.0 devices. Meanwhile, the dock comes with a fairly large power brick, in addition to the smaller one meant to connect the laptop directly to an outlet. So, you can leave the dock plugged into the wall using its own AC adapter, and keep the littler one on you while you're out and about with the Z.  Like the laptop itself, the dock has a thin, angular shape, with that that same band of metal ringing the end. If you pretend for a minute that the dock doesn't have a disc slot or various I/O ports, you might mistake its 8.7 x 5.8 x 0.7-inch (221 x 147.3 x 17.8mm) frame for an external hard drive. If you like, you can lay it flat on your desk, though it's mean to sit horizontally in a matching metal stand -- our favorite option, particularly since the stand has such a luxurious, weighty feel to it, complete with a rubberized bottom that ensures it won't skid on your desk. When you place the dock in the stand, the ports will be exposed on one end, with the slot-loading optical drive on the other. Those ports two more USB 2.0 ports (along with one of the 3.0 persuasion), as well as a VGA socket, port replicator, and duplicate HDMI and Ethernet sockets. If you go for the base $1,969 model, the dock will play and burn DVDs, though if you've got even more cash lying around you can step up to a BD-ROM or BD-RW drive. Performance and graphics Like the last Z, this year's model comes with your choice of standard voltage processors. It makes sense, given that the hard sell here is that you'll be getting a machine that purportedly offers no compromises in portability or performance. This time, as you can imagine, the processor options include Sandy Bridge CPUs. Our $2,749 tester machine came stocked with a 2.7GHz Core i7-2620M CPU, 4GB of RAM, dual 128GB SSDs, and integrated Intel graphics. That combination was enough to deliver a score of 11,808 in PCMark Vantage (11,855 with the Power Media Dock) -- either way, a roughly 25 percent gain over the current MacBook Air and a 56 percent improvement over the Series 9 we tested earlier this year. Anecdotally, even without the Power Media Dock the Z didn't miss a beat as we jumped between tabs in Chrome, wrote emails, yammered away in Gchat, downloaded two games, edited a wiki page, watched YouTube and Hulu at full-screen, and installed two PC games. And, we booted into our Windows 7 desktop in an astonishingly fast 25 seconds. Throughout our testing, though, the fans spun so noisily that someone sitting nearby in our office stopped what he was doing to express concern. They became particularly insistent while we played Call of Duty 4 (and this was even after we lowered the resolution from 1080p to 1024 x 768), though they piped down as soon as we exited the game. Additionally, that vent on the left side gets hot to the touch, though the rest of the machine, fortunately, stays cool.
So as much as some spec junkies are bound to grouse about the laptop's internal Intel graphics card, the system's well-equipped to keep up with you the vast majority of the time. It's in areas such as gaming and HD video encoding that that Radeon HD graphics card is poised to save you a headache or two. For one thing, it helped the Z's 3DMark06 soar from 4,339 to 7,955. (In 3DMark11, which requires a DirectX11-capable card, it notched P1248 at 720p resolution and X430 at 1080p.) The graphics oomph was just as obvious when we tried playing games with the Power Media Dock and then without it. In Call of Duty 4, for instance, we managed frame rates of 28 fps at 1080p resolution and a more playable 58 fps at 1600 x 900. When we disconnected the machine, though, those rates sank to 7 fps for 1080p and 16 fps for 1600 x 900. Even when we lowered the resolution to the default 1024 x 768, we still only eked out a sluggish 16 frames per second. Likewise, Batman: Arkham Asylum ran at a snail's pace (12 fps) unplugged, but rose to a more acceptable 30 fps with the help of the dock. It should go without saying that whether or not you'll be able to manage without the dock depends on your routine. We Engadget editors find ourselves in the somewhat abnormal situation of having to edit HD video and batch edit photos on the go -- all while writing stories, talking to each other over IM, and running an endless series of web searches, of course. So ditching the discrete graphics card while unplugged might not be ideal, although even then we'd feel confident about doing most of those things, especially the multitasking and light photo editing. At the end of the day, we'd still prefer that discrete card for Photoshopping and editing video, though something like an Elgato Turbo h.264 stick for encoding movies could be a good enough solution. Whatever your lifestyle, it's a fair question to ask yourself, given that you can't upgrade the discrete card or add more video memory. Think hard about the graphics performance we've been describing, because you can either take it or leave it. Battery life and software This year's Z marks the first time you can buy it with an optional $150 sheet battery, much like the one already on sale with the mid-range S series. Though it detracts from the Z's thinness, it's still easy to carry with that extra battery. On its own, the 4,000 mAh promises up to seven hours of juice -- 14, if you add the sheet battery. In our standard battery test, which involves looping a movie with WiFi on, the Z made it four hours and fifteen minutes on its own, and eight hours and forty-three minutes with the slice. On its own, the battery life is on the money -- it matches, almost minute-for-minute, what we've seen in the Series 9 and the Air, though that nearly nine-hour runtime is unheard of in this class. The closest time we've seen recently is from the Lenovo ThinkPad X220, which lasted seven hours and nineteen minutes in the same test. Although the VAIO Z comes bundled with some software you didn't ask for, most of that is Sony's own utilities, including VAIO Care for optimizing your PC, VAIO Support for troubleshooting, as well as a networking manager. Of the usual suspects known to clog up programs lists, the only ones you'll find are Microsoft Office 2010 and the annoying-but-benign Norton Internet Security. Not bad at all. Configuration optionsThe Z starts at $1,969.99 with a 2.3GHz Core i5-2410M processor, 4GB of RAM, dual 64GB solid-state drives, a 1600 x 900 panel, and a DVD burner on the Power Media Dock. That 2.7GHz Core i7 processor in our test unit is a $250 upgrade, though if you don't want to spend quite that much you can opt for the 2.6GHz Core i5-2420M option for an additional hundred bucks. It'll also cost you $100 to boost the resolution to 1080p or upgrade to 6GB of RAM (getting the maximum 8GB will add $200 to the base cost). Other options include dual 128GB SSDs for $300, twin 512GB drives for $1,100, a mobile broadband module for $50, a Blu-ray player for $100, or a Blu-ray burner for $200. We hope you've been saving up. The competitionWhen we review laptops, we typicaly compare them to any number of similar notebooks on the market. How many budget 15-inchers have you seen, for instance? Enough to crowd the displays at Best Buy. Thin-and-lights with 13- and 14-inch displays? Most every company wants to sell you one. But the VAIO Z is a rarer breed. If you're looking for a super lightweight laptop that promises long battery life and performance on par with a larger, heavier notebook, you'll find your options shrink to just a handful of models. Chief among them is the Samsung Series 9, which just got a refresh. This, too, has a 13-inch (1366 x 768) display, starting at $1,349 with a Core i5-2477M processor, 4GB of RAM, and a 128GB SSD. (Just to be clear, this is the Series 9 we reviewed earlier this year, only it's since gotten a $300 price cut.) Moving up the line, there's a $1,649 version that doubles the storage to 256GB. Finally, a $2,049 configuration boosts the RAM to 6GB and steps up to a Core i7-2617M processor. To be fair, though, if you opt for this and you'll be getting an ultra-low volage, not standard, processor, along with integrated-only graphics.  And although it's not an apples-to-apples comparison, we know a lot of shoppers are going to see this thing and compare it to the MacBook Air, which just got updated with Sandy Bridge processors. Why isn't this a completely fair comparison, you might ask? Well, aside from the fact that they're both 13-inch laptops with thin, lightweight designs, they don't have a whole lot in common. The MacBook Air has fewer features: discrete graphics aren't an option, nor is an optical drive. Its Sandy Bridge processors are ultra low voltage, as opposed to the standard-voltage kind used in the VAIO Z, while its resolution maxes out at 1440 x 900. Even the larger MacBook Airs have just two USB 2.0 ports, along with a Thunderbolt socket. And as for performance, it, too, has solid-state storage, though it starts with smaller drives. The Air offers less, but it's also cheaper, with a starting price of $1,299. Even Apple will tell you it's for everyday computing, whereas Sony has said it sees early adopters and artsy professionals snapping up the Z. And besides, those folks considering the VAIO Z have almost certainly heard of the Air, and might have already decided that they're not interested. While we're at it, here's another imperfect comparison. The Toshiba Portege R830 is a 13.3-inch laptop with an integrated optical drive that starts at three pounds -- not to mention, a much more palatable price of $899. But although it falls into the same general class as the Z -- a light laptop with a standard-voltage processor -- its lower price means decidedly inferior specs and, possibly, more performance compromises. The base configuration comes with a Core i3-2310M processor, 4GB of RAM, a 640GB 5400RPM hard drive, and integrated graphics. At the high end, there's a $1,649 version with an i7-2620M CPU, 4GB of RAM, and a 128GB SSD -- expandable to a 512GB drive with 8GB of RAM, if you like. Even then, though, you're still not coming anywhere near the $2,749 our VAIO Z costs. Wrap-up There's no question that this year's Z, like all three that came before it, is a striking, formiddable sliver of machinery. Equally indisputable: $2,749 is a lot to spend on a laptop, particularly at a time when other ultrportables such as the Samsung Series 9 and MacBook Air are getting skinnier and more capable. Whether or not the Z is worth that chunk of change ultimately depends on how you define "best." If it means superior specs and benchmark scores, then we're going to have a hard time selling you on something else. Thanks to the Power Media Dock, the Z bests all of its competitors that top out at integrated graphics, offer fewer ports, and are missing an optical drive. There are no two ways about it: the Z is simply a more powerful laptop. But not all of us swear by benchmarks, and not all of us are hardcore gamers or photography hobbyists. There are people considering this machine who have money to spend, sure, but really just want something more ambiguous: strong enough performance to handle "everyday computing," whatever that means for them. For those people, the 13-inch Air ($1,299 and up) or even the "lower-end" $1,349 Series 9 will seem just as sexy-thin -- not to mention, sufficiently powerful. These laptops also have more comfortable keyboards, and if you use them you might find yourself less troubled by fan noise. If performance and ports are what you're after, though, these ultra low voltage alternatives simply won't do, and we're guessing you're not giving them much thought anyway. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Leica D-Lux 5 gets the deluxe Colorware treatment Posted: 29 Jul 2011 12:58 PM PDT  | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| System Administrator Appreciation Day is here, show them some love (or suffer the consequences) Posted: 29 Jul 2011 12:28 PM PDT  | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Zinio 2.0 for iPad adds in-app purchasing, free article preview (video) Posted: 29 Jul 2011 12:00 PM PDT  If you're reading magazines on your iPad, there's a fairly good chance that you're using Zinio. Released today, version 2.0 of the Zinio app for iPad makes it easier to hand over those newsstand-like per-issue fees with in-app purchasing, while also adding a variety of free preview content, including access to current articles from thousands of top publications. The app's new Explore section hosts this new free content, which updates daily and includes stories from magazines like Esquire, Rolling Stone, and Elle. The new app also features significant performance boosts, like we saw with last month's Android update, in-magazine shopping, and advanced bookmarks. Another update in the coming months will bring social media capabilities, such as bookmark and article sharing. We'd still love to see lower per-issue and subscription rates, but we're happy to welcome free article content in the meantime. Jump past the break for a video overview, along with a sneak peek at those social media features with Zinio CEO Rich Maggiotto. Zinio 2.0 App for iPad, Now Available, Advances the Interactive Reading Experience Users Benefit from Unprecedented Content Discovery, including a Personalized, Immersive Reading and Shopping Experience SAN FRANCISCO, July 29, 2011 – Zinio, the world's largest and most popular global magazine newsstand, today announced that its 2.0 App for iPad is now available in the iTunes Store. This new version of Zinio offers industry-first article exploration, stellar user interaction and in-app shopping capabilities to the most in-depth selection of premium, high-quality consumer magazines from around the world. Unique to Zinio, the "Explore" section is front and center and offers unprecedented free access to current stories across every major magazine genre, from automotive to entertainment, and lifestyle to science and tech. Only with Zinio can users discover and enjoy the best magazine content from among Zinio's 4,500 magazine titles, with new stories to enjoy daily from our most popular titles including Esquire, Rolling Stone, Islands and Elle. Additional new features and updates to the Zinio 2.0 App for iPad include: • Updated Speed and Design: Interface updates have led to a cleaner look and richer visuals that are designed to create an even more compelling reading experience. Zinio users will also benefit from up to 3x faster performance speed, allowing for a smoother experience with downloading, page navigation and interactive content. • Bookmarks: Zinio 2.0 includes the highly-anticipated bookmark capability, which allows readers to save their favorite stories for easy access, the ability to edit/personalize the titles to suit their preference, and sort their bookmarked stories by date and title. Tracking favorite news stories, travel destinations, fashion tips, workouts, recipes and more has never been so easy. • Enhanced Library Management: Storing and managing a library just got a lot more convenient. A highly visible arrow appears on issues that have yet to be downloaded, so readers can be sure they have downloaded all of their issues for offline reading during travel. • In-App iTunes Purchasing: Zinio offers a frictionless, digital shopping experience. Not only can users explore and browse items within Zinio that catch their eye, but they can also purchase single issues, back issues and subscriptions in-app, simply using their iTunes account. • In-Zinio Shopping: Shopping is fast and simple. Readers can now buy clothing, accessories, furniture and a ton of other things – from within their favorite magazines. There is no need to leave Zinio to purchase things that catch a reader's eye. "Magazine readers expect and love high-quality, premium content – and Zinio's 2.0 app for iPad goes far beyond today's norm to deliver stories in a visually rich, immersive and interactive new way," said Rich Maggiotto, Zinio president and CEO. "Our new Explore section is a first, and creates the ability to browse and enjoy content you might never even knew existed from trusted editors around the globe. We've focused on satisfying the curiosity of our passionate readers, and delivering stories that personally matter to them, across all areas of interest." Continually advancing interactive capabilities allow readers to experience stories in new and immersive ways with a text view option, interactive graphics, animated illustrations, videos, in-Zinio shopping and more. Another reader-friendly advantage with Zinio is its UNITY™ platform, which allows users to store and enjoy their library across the most popular devices and platforms today, including Mac, PC, laptop, Linux, iOS, Android, Windows 7, and soon WebOS and BlackBerry. Users can access their entire library on every device that they use Zinio on – there are no complicated rights issues that only allow one issue on one device. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Posted: 29 Jul 2011 11:07 AM PDT  Despite early photographic evidence to the contrary -- and a few select themed birthday parties -- I was never really a DC Comics kid growing up. I'd chalk a fair amount of that up to the fact that, so far as these photo albums indicate, I didn't arrive on a rocketship from an exploding homeland, and was never independently wealthy, as the poor tailoring job on the Robin suit can attest. Spider-man and the X-Men, however -- they were angsty adolescents. When they weren't too busy being bitten by radioactive arachnids and scaling walls and the like, they had regular teen problems. They had pop quizzes and girl problems, and having not quite discovered the sinister cloud of punk rock hanging over Gilman Street in nearby Berkley, CA, I had them, paneled and stapled and bagged and boarded. It's probably a testament to the relative ease of growing up in Northern California that the biggest disappointment of my youth was almost certainly the fact that my dormant mutant abilities failed to manifest themselves in time for my Bar Mitzvah. But my own sequential art interests can be traced back even further -- and thankfully there exists no photographic evidence, but I think it's safe to say that Popeye was my first obsession. At three years old I developed an unhealthy attachment to a VHS of the Robert Altman movie. I can't really explain it -- perhaps an early manifestation of my soon to be realized interest in avant garde film? Or, more likely, I was just a weird kid who liked weird things. And certainly my mother didn't help to curb such bizarre behavior by drawing anchor tattoos on my skinny forearms with a pencil out of her makeup bag.  To be perfectly honest, I'm not sure what's going on here – I can tell you this much, however, in spite of the ancient-looking cars surrounding me, I was not, in fact, alive during the 70s. The 80s were, however, a fairly crazy time in their own right, all orange capes and green hats and light sabers, and by the time they were over, I had amassed a fairly impressive collection of Star Wars action figures before the decade wrapped, including somehow managing to score a Luke Skywalker in Storm Trooper uniform for some absurdly low price at a flea market. The Star Wars thing happily took a backseat to girls and school and rock and roll for a good chunk of my teen years, only to rear its ugly head like so many hapless Gungans in the late '90s with the release of the The Phantom Menace. Yes, there was camping out involved, and I do remember attempting to convince a math teacher that Episode I was a superior movie to Shakespeare in Love -- a sentiment I stand by to this day, even after coming to grips with the fact that the first Star Wars prequel was, in fact, a dismal thing.  This is a good one. I'm Mario, with a weird combination Hitler mustache and hobo beard -- I'd clearly been hitting the magic mushrooms too hard. Or maybe it's just that you shouldn't let your mom put on your Mario makeup for you. Moms are well intentioned, but let's be honest, they don't know from Nintendo. I don't suppose there's anything too novel about my professing my love for the NES and Super NES -- saying you loved Nintendo in the 80s and early 90s is a bit like saying you're really into the internet in 2011. Some things are just sort of understood. In those days I managed to avoid the exotic mystique of the Neo Geos and Sega CDs, though I did have a brief, misguided flirtation with the Genesis in early '90s. To this day, however, I remain adamant that the SNES is the greatest console of all time, though I'm likely just a touch biased, after so many nights falling asleep in front of the flicker of Secret of Mana and a Link to the Past. I was a bit of a late bloomer on the computer front, strangely enough -- though through no fault of my own. My parents were a strange sort of selective luddite, not averse to certain amenities like TV, CD players, and indoor plumbing, but somehow anti-personal computer. I, meanwhile, entertained fantasies of game development through the most analog means imaginable: pencils and sketchbook after sketchbook. When they finally brought one into the house expressly for word processing purposes, the machine -- an already-ancient Macintosh Classic -- was well beyond its expiration date. It wasn't much, but it did foster a devotion to Apple products early on, when there was still something of an underdog appeal to the then-struggling company. The old beast was finally replaced by a Performa tower, on which I taught myself some web coding, and, eventually, a G3 tower, the first computer I ever owned myself, with a monitor the size of a city block.  Who you gonna call? Not me -- I'll be too incapacitated by the white hairspray currently dripping into my eyes. Of course I'm Egon here, the nerdiest of all Ghostbusters. I also had an affinity for Donatello in the Ninja Turtle world. These facts should not be regarded as a coincidence. My early musical obsessions took on a similar shape -- Buddy Holly as small child and then They Might Be Giants, then Weezer, and Elvis Costello. The fact that I never mastered the guitar despite years of lessons can probably be chalked up to my cursed 20 / 20 vision.  Here's one of me with a real-life comic book superhero, taken on our trip to visit Harvey Pekar in Cleveland Heights for his 70th birthday, all part of my gig moonlighting as a comics journalist while working at tech publications during the day -- the nerdiest secret life, ever. Man, it feels good to finally get that weight off my shoulders.  Which brings us right up to this week. Not much to say about this one that wasn't said on this week's Engadget Show. I will say though, that I've always considered having a career that would make your 13-year-old self jealous is a pretty solid goal for life. So I submit to me the above picture with They Might Be Giants. Pretty good, right? Brian Heater is an Associate Editor at Engadget. On Twitter he is @bheater, where he talks about technology sometimes. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 3D-printed plane takes to the skies, sounds like a Black & Decker (video) Posted: 29 Jul 2011 10:53 AM PDT  | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Engadget Podcast 250 - 07.29.2011 Posted: 29 Jul 2011 10:30 AM PDT  Host: Tim Stevens, Brian Heater Guests: Dana Wollman, Richard Lawler Producer: Trent Wolbe Music: Beethoven's 5th 02:24 - Mac mini review (mid 2011) 03:20 - Editorial: Apple's officially over the optical drive, for better or worse 09:16 - MacBook Air review (mid 2011) 16:10 - Netflix adds Mad Men in the US today, CBS content in Canada and Latin America later 16:34 - Amazon Prime Instant Video is adding CBS TV shows, including all of Star Trek 17:50 - Amazon strikes movie streaming deal with Universal, adds 'Fear and Loathing' to free shipping 24:17 - The Engadget Show - 023: We tour a headphone factory, talk record labels, and look at They Might Be Giants' favorite gadgets 25:36 - Nintendo posts earnings, drops 3DS from $249 to $169 August 12th, current owners get 20 free games 28:47 - Logitech CEO steps down after money losing Q1, Revue price slashed to $99 37:15 - Toshiba Thrive review 39:52 - HTC Status review 44:46 - Windows Phone 7.5 Mango in-depth preview (video) 46:20 - HTC CFO says it's time to 'figure it out' with Apple 48:52 - Two more fake Apple Stores spotted by officials in China, two get the smackdown 50:40 - Listener questions Hear the podcast Subscribe to the podcast [iTunes] Subscribe to the Podcast directly in iTunes (enhanced AAC). [RSS MP3] Add the Engadget Podcast feed (in MP3) to your RSS aggregator and have the show delivered automatically. [RSS AAC] Add the Engadget Podcast feed (in enhanced AAC) to your RSS aggregator. [Zune] Subscribe to the Podcast directly in the Zune Marketplace Download the podcast LISTEN (MP3) LISTEN (AAC) Contact the podcast Send your questions to @tim_stevens. Leave us a voicemail: (423) 438-3005 (GADGET-3005) E-mail us: podcast at engadget dot com Twitter: @tim_stevens @bheater @danawollman @rjcc This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Google launches Hotel Finder, finds a way to recycle Google Maps reviews Posted: 29 Jul 2011 10:03 AM PDT  By now, it should be no secret that Google wants to get up in your online trip-planning business (if it wasn't somehow there already). First, there was the announcement that El Goog would buy ITA, the company serving up pretty much all of your online ticketing options -- a deal that still hasn't closed. Then came flight schedule searches and now, the outfit's rounding it all out by throwing hotels into the mix. The company just launched Hotel Finder, a service that lets you -- wait for it -- find a place to lay your weary head in these great fifty states. At first glance, it's little more than a specific use case for Google Maps -- just type in a city or US zip code to get a map with the usual spreads of pinpoints. Though Google won't be the middleman booking your hotel reservation, you can use the tool to fine-tune your search, drawing circles on the map to scour multiple neighborhoods. As you'd expect, you can also whittle the search by price and rating, and read reviews that people originally posted on Google Maps. One thing we're liking about the UI is that you don't have to open a new tab to read the full spill on a hotel -- you can just click the listing to see it expand right there, alongside pretty photo collages. Hit the source link to poke around, though if its bare-bones simplicity turns you off, don't say Google didn't warn you -- the tool is so new that Google isn't calling it a "beta" so much as an...experiment. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Duke University's underwater invisibility cloak stills troubled waters Posted: 29 Jul 2011 09:34 AM PDT Everyone's jumping on the invisibility cloaking bandwagon these days, but no one's quite managed to fully deliver on the promise. The same goes for two Duke University researchers who believe their mesh casing could grant the gift of concealment to underwater craft -- submarines, anyone? According to the proposed model, a specially designed shell punctuated by complex patterns of permeability and millimeter-sized pumps would eliminate the drag and turbulent wake caused by an object as it moves through the water. Utilizing the penetrable gaps in the case, water would at first accelerate, and then decelerate to its original speed before exiting -- rendering the fluid around the object virtually undisturbed. Now for the bad news: the design doesn't quite work for large-scale, real-world implementations -- hello again, submarines -- since the tech can only cloak small structures, like "a vehicle one centimetre across... [moving] at speeds of less than one centimetre per second." It's a massive bummer, we know, but we're getting there folks -- you just won't see it when it actually happens. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet gets an August 23rd release Posted: 29 Jul 2011 09:02 AM PDT  [Thanks, Jeff] | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Qriocity video streaming coming to Xperia packing pocket near you Posted: 29 Jul 2011 08:26 AM PDT  | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ASUS Eee Pad Slider priced in Portuguese catalog, manhandled on camera (video) Posted: 29 Jul 2011 07:53 AM PDT  ASUS first showed off its Eee Pad Slider what seems forever ago. That was way, way back at CES, amongst the deluge of tablety announcements. The keyboard-hiding Honeycomb device is finally on its way, having been given an August release date in the UK and recently hitting the FCC in the States. The 10.1-inch tablet just popped up in the August catalog for the Phone House (the Carphone Warehouse's brand outside the UK) catalog in Portugal, priced at €349 ($497) under contract with ZON -- that's down from €479 ($684) without contract. The forthcoming tablet also hammed it up for the camera recently -- video of that after the break. [Thanks, Zack and Pedro] | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Fusion Garage's Grid 10 tablet clears the FCC, begs us not to call it the 'JooJoo 2' Posted: 29 Jul 2011 07:18 AM PDT  If at first you don't succeed, discontinue your product, carry on a lawsuit, and then try again. That's the story thus far for Fusion Garage, the company behind the failed JooJoo tablet, an overpriced, hard-to-use slate that proudly omitted all the things people like about tablets -- you know, like apps. After the underwhelming sales figures started rolling in, Chandrashekar Rathakrishnan, the company's founder, admitted that perhaps some people might sometimes be interested in doing things other than surf the web. That was the end of JooJoo, though he promised, ominously, that we hadn't seen the last of Fusion Garage. Well, here we are: the troubled company just sent another tablet through the FCC, and no, it's not called the "JooJoo 2." Rather, this one's dubbed the "Grid 10" -- a likely attempt on Fusion Garage's part to distance itself as much as possible from its embarrassing (and messy) entrance into the tablet market. For now, though, that's near-impossible, especially given that this FCC report contains precious few details about what this thing will be capable of. No word either on when the JooJoo will rise from the grave as an Android-running zombie, but our guess is that apocalyptic day is nigh. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| XBee grows up, delivers WiFi to DIYers and Arduino enthusiasts Posted: 29 Jul 2011 06:39 AM PDT  Digi Launches Wi-Fi Version of Popular XBee Module -Sharing a common hardware and software footprint, low-power XBee Wi-Fi modules enable a single board design with multiple wireless frequencies and protocols- MINNETONKA, Minn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Digi International (NASDAQ: DGII) today introduced the XBee® Wi-Fi, an embedded module that enables industry leading low power, serial-to-Wi-Fi networking in the popular XBee form factor. Because of the XBee's common footprint and application programming interface (API), customers can now create a single board design for wireless products that supports 802.15.4, ZigBee, ZigBee Smart Energy, 2.4 GHz, 900 and 868 MHz, Wi-Fi and proprietary DigiMesh protocols. "XBee modules offer developers tremendous flexibility and are extremely easy to use," said Larry Kraft, senior vice president of global sales and marketing, Digi International. "By adding a low-power Wi-Fi module to the XBee product family we give customers the fastest and most flexible way to get Wi-Fi up and running on their systems." Ideal for energy management, wireless sensor networks and intelligent asset management, the XBee Wi-Fi offers 802.11 b/g/n networking and flexible SPI and UART serial interfaces. Because the module includes the 802.11 b/g/n physical layer, baseband MAC and TCP/IP stack, developers can add Wi-Fi to their products simply by connecting to the XBee Wi-Fi's serial port. The XBee Wi-Fi is fully tested at manufacture and comes with modular certification for the U.S., E.U., Canada and a number of other countries, further reducing the time to market, development expense and design complexity. XBee Wi-Fi development kits are available now for $149. For more information about the XBee Wi-Fi, visit http://www.digi.com/xbeewifi. About Digi International Digi International is making wireless M2M easy by developing reliable products and solutions to connect and securely manage local or remote electronic devices over the network or via the Web. Digi offers the highest levels of performance, flexibility and quality, and markets its products through a global network of distributors and resellers, systems integrators and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). For more information, visit Digi's Web site at www.digi.com, or call 877-912-3444. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| HP tells developers to start submitting apps for Pre 3, still on track for summer launch? Posted: 29 Jul 2011 05:59 AM PDT    | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| British judge doesn't like the cut of Newzbin 2's jib, orders BT to block it Posted: 29 Jul 2011 05:01 AM PDT  | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Google's Music Beta gives users two invites, keys to the cloud for their best mates Posted: 29 Jul 2011 04:28 AM PDT  [Thanks, Ralph] | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Think Geek's Electric Guitar Bag holds your laptop, lets you 'rock' the commute Posted: 29 Jul 2011 03:39 AM PDT  ThinkGeek's really letting the jams out this time. The company is no stranger to shirts emblazoned with playable instruments -- but a messenger bag? Its new Electric Rock Guitar Bag features 14 buttons for a fretboard so you can strum any songs in a Major key, and a detachable amp that cranks all the way up to an obligatory 11. You'll also have room for a 17-inch laptop, while its eight pockets can hold your Green Day and Blink-182 chord-charts. Come August 28th, 50 bucks is all it'll cost ya to rock while you're rolling during the commute, but in the meantime, we know the perfect synth player for when you wanna get that office band started. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Alibaba announces 'cloud-powered' Aliyun OS, K-Touch W700 phone Posted: 29 Jul 2011 02:56 AM PDT   Alibaba Cloud Computing Unveils Mobile Cloud Operating System Alibaba Cloud Computing ("AliCloud"), developer of advanced data-centric cloud computing services and a subsidiary of Alibaba Group, has unveiled its internally developed cloud-based mobile device operating system, "Aliyun OS." The K-Touch Cloud-Smart Phone W700, the first mobile phone powered by the cloud OS, was also unveiled here today and will be introduced to the Chinese market at the end of July. AliCloud also plans to integrate the OS with other devices including mobile phones with larger screens and tablet computers in the coming months. "Mobile users want a more open and convenient mobile OS, one that allows them to truly enjoy all that the Internet has to offer right in the palm of their hand, and the cloud OS, with its use of cloud-based applications, will provide that," said Wang Jian, president of Alibaba Cloud Computing. "Introducing cloud apps to mobile devices not only brings a whole new user experience, but also greater ease for third-party mobile software developers who will be able to use Internet technology such as HTML5 and JavaScript to reduce the complexity in the app development process." The cloud OS will feature cloud services including e-mail, Internet search, weather updates and mapping & GPS navigation tools. A distinguishing feature of the cloud OS is its support for web-based apps. These offer users an Internet-like experience and do not require the user to download or install application software on their mobile devices. Cloud OS users can seamlessly synchronize, store and back-up data such as contact information, call logs, text messages, notes and photos to AliCloud's remote data center, and can also access and update this data across all their PC and mobile devices. AliCloud will provide each cloud OS user with a total of 100 gigabytes of data storage initially, with plans to expand according to user needs. Third-party developers can opt to either develop cloud apps over their own servers or choose to use AliCloud's infrastructure and open platform services at a low cost and quickly develop their businesses. The cloud OS is the result of three years of development and uses AliCloud's self-developed distributed file system and virtual machine; the cloud OS is also fully compatible with Android-based applications. According to latest statistics from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the number of 3G mobile users in China now exceeds 80 million, or 9.5 percent of all mobile users nationwide. Sales of smartphones reached 62 million in 2010 and 19.07 million handsets were sold in Q1 2011; sales of smartphones accounted for approximately 30 percent of all mobile phone sales, up from 19.2 percent in Q1 2010 according to research firm Analysys International. About Alibaba Cloud Computing Alibaba Cloud Computing was established in September 2009 with the mission of building an advanced data-centric cloud computing service platform. The company is committed to supporting the growth of Alibaba Group and the whole e-commerce ecosystem by providing a comprehensive suite of Internet-based computing services, which include e-commerce data mining, high-speed massive e-commerce data processing, and data customization. Alibaba Cloud Computing is wholly owned by Alibaba Group. About Alibaba Group Alibaba Group is a global e-commerce leader and the largest e-commerce company in China. Since it was founded in 1999, Alibaba Group has grown to include the following core businesses: Alibaba.com (HKSE:1688; 1688.HK), Alibaba Group's flagship company and the world's leading B2B e-commerce company; Taobao Marketplace, China's primary C2C online shopping destination; Taobao Mall, China's leading B2C online marketplace for quality, brand name goods; eTao, China's most comprehensive shopping search engine; Alibaba Cloud Computing, a developer of advanced data-centric cloud computing services; and China Yahoo!, one of China's leading Internet portals. Alipay, China's largest third-party online payment service, is an affiliate of Alibaba Group. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Trojan asteroid caught circling Earth, the Greeks deny involvement Posted: 29 Jul 2011 02:17 AM PDT  NASA's WISE Mission Finds First Trojan Asteroid Sharing Earth's Orbit 07.27.11 PASADENA, Calif. – Astronomers studying observations taken by NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission have discovered the first known "Trojan" asteroid orbiting the sun along with Earth. Trojans are asteroids that share an orbit with a planet near stable points in front of or behind the planet. Because they constantly lead or follow in the same orbit as the planet, they never can collide with it. In our solar system, Trojans also share orbits with Neptune, Mars and Jupiter. Two of Saturn's moons share orbits with Trojans. Scientists had predicted Earth should have Trojans, but they have been difficult to find because they are relatively small and appear near the sun from Earth's point of view. "These asteroids dwell mostly in the daylight, making them very hard to see," said Martin Connors of Athabasca University in Canada, lead author of a new paper on the discovery in the July 28 issue of the journal Nature. "But we finally found one, because the object has an unusual orbit that takes it farther away from the sun than what is typical for Trojans. WISE was a game-changer, giving us a point of view difficult to have at Earth's surface." The WISE telescope scanned the entire sky in infrared light from January 2010 to February 2011. Connors and his team began their search for an Earth Trojan using data from NEOWISE, an addition to the WISE mission that focused in part on near-Earth objects, or NEOs, such as asteroids and comets. NEOs are bodies that pass within 28 million miles (45 million kilometers) of Earth's path around the sun. The NEOWISE project observed more than 155,000 asteroids in the main belt between Mars and Jupiter, and more than 500 NEOs, discovering 132 that were previously unknown. The team's hunt resulted in two Trojan candidates. One called 2010 TK7 was confirmed as an Earth Trojan after follow-up observations with the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawaii. The asteroid is roughly 1,000 feet (300 meters) in diameter. It has an unusual orbit that traces a complex motion near a stable point in the plane of Earth's orbit, although the asteroid also moves above and below the plane. The object is about 50 million miles (80 million kilometers) from Earth. The asteroid's orbit is well-defined and for at least the next 100 years, it will not come closer to Earth than 15 million miles (24 million kilometers). An animation showing the orbit is available at: http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/videogallery/index.html?media_id=103550791 . "It's as though Earth is playing follow the leader," said Amy Mainzer, the principal investigator of NEOWISE at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "Earth always is chasing this asteroid around." A handful of other asteroids also have orbits similar to Earth. Such objects could make excellent candidates for future robotic or human exploration. Asteroid 2010 TK7 is not a good target because it travels too far above and below the plane of Earth's orbit, which would require large amounts of fuel to reach it. "This observation illustrates why NASA's NEO Observation program funded the mission enhancement to process data collected by WISE," said Lindley Johnson, NEOWISE program executive at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "We believed there was great potential to find objects in near-Earth space that had not been seen before." | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Cellphones are dangerous / not dangerous: little tykes under the spotlight Posted: 29 Jul 2011 01:36 AM PDT  While long-term risks remain unknown, the researchers conclude that "a large and immediate risk of cellphones causing brain tumors in children can be excluded." In other words: little Suzy won't begin sprouting cancer cells overnight. While you doting parents may find comfort in the latest research, you might consider stopping short of giving the mischievous rascal an unlimited voice plan. After all, gossip still spreads best at the school yard. [Image courtesy Derek Olson (flickr)] | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Spotify sued by PacketVideo for patent infringement Posted: 29 Jul 2011 12:49 AM PDT  | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Toshiba promises cure for Thrive's sleep disorder 'early next week' Posted: 29 Jul 2011 12:20 AM PDT  | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Caltech researchers devise acoustic diode that sends sound one-way, could harvest energy Posted: 28 Jul 2011 11:31 PM PDT  Sound has this habit of traveling in more than one direction -- useful in most circumstances, but not so welcome when a person in one room is looking for a little peace and quiet while someone in the next is blasting music. Sound-proofing is one solution to that problem, but some researchers at Caltech say they've now come up with a better one: an acoustic diode that can be tuned to allow sound to pass through in only one direction. As you might expect, however, that's all still very much in the early stages, but the researchers say the technology could eventually allow for "true soundproofing," or even be used for other purposes, like scavenging sound energy from structural vibrations and turning that into electricity. The official announcement with some of the finer details is after the break, and the researchers' full paper is published in the July 24th issue of Nature Materials. Caltech Engineers Develop One-way Transmission System for Sound Waves PASADENA, Calif.- While many hotel rooms, recording studios, and even some homes are built with materials to help absorb or reflect sound, mechanisms to truly control the direction of sound waves are still in their infancy. However, researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have now created the first tunable acoustic diode-a device that allows acoustic information to travel only in one direction, at controllable frequencies. The mechanism they developed is outlined in a paper published on July 24 in the journal Nature Materials. Borrowing a concept from electronics, the acoustic diode is a component that allows a current-in this case a sound wave-to pass in one direction, while blocking the current in the opposite direction. "We exploited a physical mechanism that causes a sharp transition between transmitting and nontransmitting states of the diode," says Chiara Daraio, professor of aeronautics and applied physics at Caltech and lead author on the study. "Using experiments, simulations, and analytical predictions, we demonstrated the one-way transmission of sound in an audible frequency range for the first time." This new mechanism brings the idea of true soundproofing closer to reality. Imagine two rooms labeled room A and room B. This new technology, Daraio explains, would enable someone in room A to hear sound coming from room B; however, it would block the same sound in room A from being heard in room B. "The concept of the one-way transmission of sound could be quite important in architectural acoustics, or the science and engineering of sound control within buildings," says Georgios Theocharis, a postdoctoral scholar in Daraio's laboratory and a co-author of the study. The system is based on a simple assembly of elastic spheres-granular crystals that transmit the sound vibrations-that could be easily used in multiple settings, can be tuned easily, and can potentially be scaled to operate within a wide range of frequencies, meaning its application could reach far beyond soundproofing. Similar systems have been demonstrated by other scientists, but they all feature smooth transitions between transmitting and nontransmitting states instead of the sharp transitions needed to be more effective at controlling the flow of sound waves. To obtain the sharp transition, the team created a periodic system with a small defect that supports this kind of quick change from an "on" to an "off" transmission state. According to Daraio, this means the system is very sensitive to small variations of operational conditions, like pressure and movement, making it useful in the development of ultrasensitive acoustic sensors to detect sound waves. The system can also operate at different frequencies of sound and is capable of downshifting, or reducing the frequency of the traveling signals, as needed. "We propose to use these effects to improve energy-harvesting technologies," she says. "For example, we may be able to scavenge sound energy from undesired structural vibrations in machinery by controlling the flow of sound waves away from the machinery and into a transducer. The transducer would then convert the sound waves into electricity." Daraio says the technology can also shift the undesired frequencies to a range that enables a more efficient conversion to electricity. The team plans to continue studying the fundamental properties of these systems, focusing on their potential application to energy-harvesting systems. They also believe that these systems may be applicable to a range of technologies including biomedical ultrasound devices, advanced noise control, and even thermal materials aimed at temperature control. "Because the concepts governing wave propagation are universal to many systems, we envision that the use of this novel way to control energy might enable the design of many advanced thermal and acoustic materials and devices," says Daraio. The Nature Materials paper is titled "Bifurcation-based acoustic switching and rectification." Nicholas Boechler, a former Ph.D. student at Caltech, is also an author on the study. The research was supported by the National Science Foundation, the Office of Naval Research, and the A. S. Onassis Benefit Foundation. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Dell Streak 10 Pro vs. Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1... fight! Posted: 28 Jul 2011 10:52 PM PDT  Update: It appears that some of our readers are missing the point: the 16GB WiFi Galaxy Tab 10.1 is being sold for $499 in the US, and it'll most likely be more expensive in China; whereas the Streak 10 Pro is priced at just ¥2,999 ($465). So again, you get what you pay for. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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