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Saturday, September 17, 2011

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Evolta robot to take on the Ironman Triathlon, conquer the course in a week

Posted: 17 Sep 2011 11:07 AM PDT

Panasonic's little battery-powered bot that could, the Evolta, has garnered our attention several times over the years. It's already climbed out of the Grand Canyon and walked 500km from Tokyo to Kyoto, but apparently neither was enough to prove it and its namesake batteries' true mettle. This time, Panasonic's putting three of the robots through the Ironman Triathlon in Hawaii, and they've got a week to swim 2.4 miles, bike 112, and run a 26.2 mile marathon. Unlike the meatbags running the race who have a day to finish, the robots get a week -- though they'll be doing their thing 24 hours a day while only taking breaks to recharge their three AA batteries. Intrigued? The race starts on October 23rd, so there's plenty of time to watch the appropriately dramatic video explaining the challenge facing the triumvirate of tiny triathletes after the break.

Shapeways serves up prêt-à-imprimer 3D bones, Lagerfeld stands by for full skeletal replacement

Posted: 17 Sep 2011 09:52 AM PDT

3D printed chocolates? Sure, sounds innocuous enough. But made-to-order 3D printed bones? Now, that's just morbid. For the surgical team at Glasgow's Royal Hospital for Sick Children, however, the tech's come in handy as a budget-priced, pre-operative planning tool. Mark Frame, an orthopedic surgical trainee at RHSC, first came up with the idea to create the osteo-facsimiles after a costly university-made replica, commissioned for a procedure, failed to meet necessary proportion and size requirements. After undertaking a bit of self-assigned internet research, Frame sorted out a method to create renders of a patient's fractured forearm using CT scans processed via the open source OsiriX software. These were then passed through a separate MeshLab application to tidy up any artifacting, and finally exported in 3D-compatible .stl format. The resulting files were sent to Shapeways for printing, with the white plastic bone copies delivered just seven days later for £77. The hospital's been so pleased with the inexpensive outcome, that it's already begun prep work on a hip replacement surgery using a replicated pelvis -- and, no, they didn't specify if the patient was a fashion victim.

Engadget takes over Times Square, courtesy of TS2 (video)

Posted: 17 Sep 2011 09:00 AM PDT

Remember when we took over Times Square last month? Contrary to comments-based speculation, we didn't drop several years' salary to see our names and faces (and pets) up in lights. We were actually shooting a segment for the Engadget Show about a new service from Times Square2 (TS2). The NASDAQ / Thompson Reuters alliance is working to increase engagement on the giant electronic billboards it controls in one of the most heavily trafficked spots in the US. The organization has designed a free API for developers, making it possible to create applications for its giant ad spaces on the side of the Thompson Reuters and NASDAQ buildings, and it showed us some of the fruits of its labor in the video clip that you'll find after the break.
Engadget in Times Square



The company has already been been experimenting with such interactivity, making it possible for tweeted hash tags from passersby to show up on the giant screens. The new API, codenamed "Pomegranate," ups the ante on such interactivity -- letting third-party developers create interactive content for use with the displays. When the alliance offered us the chance to play around with the interface -- and control giant signs in one of New York City's most visited tourist spots -- we naturally jumped at the opportunity, displaying our homepage, staff members, and pets (Tim's dogs and Brian rabbit).

The interface that we played around with on one of the company's MacBook Airs was fairly straightforward -- really just a blank page where we could enter image URLs. Once entered, the image must be approved by the organization, to avoid anything racy showing up in a spot heavily trafficked by families (and appearing as the backdrop for countless TV shows and films). The whole process takes a few minutes to go from computer to screen. This, of course, is one of the most basic applications of the system -- the company is also looking to offer things like games as means for making content more engaging.

The API itself will be available for free. At present, it's only available in a limited trial. Slots on the screens aren't free, of course, seeing as how something like 1.5 million people walk through the area a day, but TS2 will be making a few spots available to developers on an "experimental basis." Interested parties can check our more information about the API by clicking the More Coverage link below.

Eyes-on with Thunderbolt on Windows at IDF 2011 (video)

Posted: 17 Sep 2011 08:04 AM PDT

Sure, you've seen the announcement of Thunderbolt on the PC, the chips that'll power it and a bevy of compatible accessories, but how about actual proof of Thunderbolt working on Windows? Hidden deep in the recesses of IDF's technical showcase, we found just that and immortalized it on video for all to see. Essentially the same Chipzilla demo as when we first witnessed the interconnect on Macs, we watched the playback of four 1080p streams devour over 700MB of throughput off a PCIe attached SSD. You know the drill, serious bit slinging awaits in the gallery below and video after the break.

Myriam Joire contributed to this report.
Eyes-on with Thunderbolt on Windows at IDF 2011

ViviTouch haptic technology hands-on: electroactive polymer giving a 'high definition feel'

Posted: 17 Sep 2011 07:01 AM PDT

Haptic feedback isn't exactly something that'd blow people's mind these days, with most mobile devices and gaming controllers already packing a little vibrator to spice up one's gaming experience. While these motors do the job just fine for delivering the sensation of large engines and explosions, their monotonic performance and relatively high minimum output threshold means they can't reproduce finer vibration. For instance, you wouldn't be able to feel a guitar string fade away after a strum, nor would you feel the finer end of a spring recoil. This is where Bayer MaterialScience's ViviTouch -- previously dubbed Reflex -- tries to fill the void.

For those who aren't familiar, the magic behind ViviTouch is its electroactive polymer (or EAP in short) -- imagine a thin sheet that consists of two electrode layers sandwiching a dielectric elastomer film, and when a voltage is applied, the two attracting electrodes compress the entire sheet. This slim, low-powered ViviTouch actuator module can be placed underneath an inertial mass (usually a battery) on a tray, thus amplifying the haptic feedback produced by the host device's audio signal between 50Hz and 300Hz (with a 5ms response time).
ViviTouch haptic technology hands-on


Our first encounter with this haptic technology goes as far back as CES at the beginning of this year, where Mophie let us handle a prototype of its Pulse haptic game grip for the fourth-gen iPod touch. Our very own Myriam was impressed by this $100 peripheral (which is now available on Amazon), and so were some of us here at TGS on certain applications. We were most impressed by the pinball game demonstration using the Pulse, and even more so with a similar demo on a modified first-gen iPad that house two ViviTouch actuators -- there was certainly a more natural feel to the game, especially when the pinball hit the bumpers.

However, we had mixed feelings with the modified Xbox controller and Logitech G35 headphones. For the former, we're more used to strong rumbling produced by the built-in motor, but we can certainly see potential for games that feature more delicate actions with, say, musical instruments and elastic elements (think Angry Birds and World of Goo). Better yet, a combination of both ViviTouch and the usual vibration motor should fix each other's problem, but we'd imagine the ViviTouch module needs to be large enough in order to avoid being drowned out by its companion.

As for the headphones, we enjoyed the extra oomph provided by ViviTouch, but perhaps having the actuators right in the cushioned cups isn't the most effective way of providing haptic feedback, plus our ears were starting to feel itchy from the vibration. It'd be interesting to see if things improve by somehow placing the modules on the top of our heads or even on our neck -- get to it, engineers!

Mobile Miscellany: week of September 12, 2011

Posted: 17 Sep 2011 06:00 AM PDT

This week was packed with news on the mobile front, so it was easy to miss a few stories here and there. Here's some of the other stuff that happened in the wide world of wireless for the week of September 12, 2011:
  • Vodacom South Africa has joined the data throttling club, though this carrier is taking a slightly different spin: BlackBerry users consuming more than 100MB of data each month will find their download speeds downgraded to GPRS or EDGE. The company claims this will only affect less than five percent of its BlackBerry customers. [via N4BB]
  • Bada fans: the Samsung Wave 578 is featured on Orange's site as "coming soon." [via The Inquirer]
  • Motorola announced the availability of the Fire and Fire XT in India this week. [via Motorola]
  • The Sony Ericsson Xperia Ray is now being sold at Vodafone UK. [via Vodafone]
  • Parrot announced the most recent addition to its lineup of Bluetooth products, called the Minikit+, a refresh of its popular hands-free speakerphone. The new model offers simultaneous pairing and voice commands. [via Parrot]
  • Research in Motion is hoping to put the NFC functionality in OS 7 to good use, as it announced that the BlackBerry Bold 9900 / 9330 as well as the Curve 9350 / 9360 will support HID's iCLASS digital keys, which means corporate folks will able to use their smartphone as an access card. [via PhoneScoop]
  • While digging through the Droid Bionic's webtop app, the names of two unknown Motorola phones were discovered: the Edison and the Common. Little is known about the Common, but a recent FCC filing mentioned the Edison and is speculated to be the follow-up to the Atrix, albeit sans LTE as originally hoped. [via Droid-Life]
  • The manager of the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace, Matt Bencke, wrote a post pleading developers to submit their Mango-compatible apps as soon as possible, as the new update is coming to existing phones soon and it's obviously very important to have Windows Phone 7.5 run as smooth as possible. [via WMPowerUser]
  • A leaked Radio Shack roadmap indicates the HTC Vigor should be available in stores by October 20th, and the QWERTY-packing Samsung Stratosphere will be up for online ordering as early as October 6th. As this is a third-party retailer, we can't say with surety that these dates reflect the carrier's official release. [via Droid-Life]

Kingston's high-performance KC100 SSD is S.M.A.R.Ter than yours

Posted: 17 Sep 2011 04:56 AM PDT

Good news for secure data fans who aren't fond of moving parts: Kingston's shipping a new line of security-focused solid state drives for all your info-hiding needs. Despite being touted as an enterprise product, the new line will happily sit in any SATA-capable machine you wish, smoothly chugging along thanks to its beloved SandForce DuraClass technology. It's not often you find a veritable plethora of features tucked between slabs of NAND, but these guys do have some smarts. Literally. S.M.A.R.T (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology -- don'tcha know) is firmly onboard, as well as self-encrypting tech to keep any schadenfreude at bay. Beyond that, you can look forward to 6Gb/s throughput, backwards-compatibility with current SATA 2 systems, plus a pretty darn generous five years of warranty. For your cut of the action you'll be shelling out $337 (120GB), $650 (240GB) or $1,270 (480GB), depending on how much data you just can't walk away from. A not-at-all pushy infomercial is embedded after the break -- for laughs, or learning.

Show full PR text
Kingston Digital Launches First SandForce-based Business-Equipped SSD

* Extended Five-year Warranty
* Data Integrity Protection Featuring DuraClass Technology
* Only Client-based SSD to Offer Enterprise S.M.A.R.T Attributes

FOUNTAIN VALLEY, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Kingston Digital, Inc., the Flash memory affiliate of Kingston Technology Company, Inc., the independent world leader in memory products, today announced it is shipping the SSDNow KC100, the company's first SATA Rev. 3.0 (6Gb/s) business-equipped SSD. KC100 utilizes the latest award-winning SandForce® controller. This powerhouse SSD delivers exceptional performance and instantly boosts the productivity of any client system.

"Kingston® is thrilled to offer the new business-equipped KC100 SSD to enterprises"
KC100 is backed by a five-year warranty to match the industry average for product refresh cycles in the enterprise. Utilizing SandForce's DuraClass™ technology, KC100 delivers world-class data integrity protection. Corporations can rest assured their data is safe as the drive offers advanced wear leveling and garbage collection to maintain optimal endurance and performance. Data integrity protection runs transparently in the background so it never disrupts daily business.

KC100 is the only business-equipped SSD to offer enterprise-level S.M.A.R.T attributes. The SSD's usage statistics, health and life stage can be monitored with industry standard and publicly available S.M.A.R.T monitoring tools. This provides peace of mind for IT departments knowing their employees are taken care of as the KC100 client-side SSDs are reliable and running optimally.

"Kingston® is thrilled to offer the new business-equipped KC100 SSD to enterprises," said Ariel Perez, SSD business manager, Kingston. "Data integrity is important to every company and the KC100 is sure to deliver the highest standards of data protection on the client systems in which it is installed. Users can rest assured that with the combination of its endurance, reliability and performance, KC100 will become a very important asset in the workplace."

The new KC100 self-encrypts to provide full and immediate client-level data encryption. With two embedded encryption engines, running in both AES-128 and AES-256, encryption is performed at the drive level without draining host system resources and slowing down data transfer rates. KC100 is also backwards-compatible with current SATA 2 systems so investments are future-proofed for the next client system upgrade.

A video with more information on the KC100 business-equipped SSD is available here: http://www.youtube.com/embed/_6PTLFG43UA.

SSDNow KC100 ships in 120GB, 240GB and 480GB capacities, as a standalone or as an upgrade bundle kit. It is backed by a five-year warranty, 24/7 tech support and legendary Kingston reliability. For more information visit www.kingston.com.

Kingston SSDNow KC100 Features and Specifications:

Sequential Reads 6Gb/s1:
SATA Rev. 3.0 – 120GB & 240GB: 555MB/s; 480GB: 540MB/s
SATA Rev. 2.0 – 120GB, 240GB & 480GB: 280MB/s
Sequential Writes 6Gb/s
SATA Rev. 3.0 – 120GB & 240GB: 510MB/s; 480GB: 450MB/s
SATA Rev. 2.0 – 120GB, 240GB & 480GB: 260MB/s
Sustained Random 4K Read/Write2:
120GB: 20,000/60,000 IOPS
240GB: 40,000/60,000 IOPS
480GB: 60,000/45,000 IOPS
Max Random 4K Read/Write:
120GB: 90,000 / 70,000 IOPS
240GB: 95,000 / 60,000 IOPS
480GB: 77,000 / 45,000 IOPS
Form factor: 2.5"
Interface: SATA Rev. 3.0 (6Gb/s), SATA Rev 2.0 (3Gb/s) and SATA Rev 1.0 (1.5Gb/s)
Guaranteed: five-year Kingston warranty, 24/7 tech support
Enterprise S.M.A.R.T Tools: Reliability Tracking, Usage Statistics, Life Remaining, Power Loss, Wear Leveling, Temperature, Drive Life Protection
Capacity3: 120GB, 240GB, 480GB
Storage temperatures: -40°C - 85°C
Operating temperatures: 0°C - 70°C
Dimensions: 69.85mm x 100mm x 9.5mm
Vibration operating: 2.17G
Vibration non-operating: 20G
Operating shock: 1500G
Power specs: 0.455 W (TYP) Idle / 1.6 W (TYP) Read / 2.05 W (TYP) Write

Kingston SSDNow KC100 Business Equipped Solid-State Drive
Part number Capacity and features
MSRP (U.S. only)
SKC100S3/120G 120GB KC100 Stand-alone SSD
$337.00
SKC100S3/240G 240GB KC100 Stand-alone SSD
$650.00
SKC100S3/480G 480GB KC100 Stand-alone SSD
$1,270.00
SKC100S3B/120G 120GB KC100 Upgrade Bundle Kit
$353.00
SKC100S3B/240G 240GB KC100 Upgrade Bundle Kit
$665.00
SKC100S3B/480G 480GB KC100 Upgrade Bundle Kit
$1,285.00

1 Based on "out-of-box performance" with ATTO Disk Benchmark 2.41. Speed may vary due to host hardware software and usage
2 Based on "out-of-box performance" with IOMeter08
3 Please note: Some of the listed capacity on a Flash storage device is used for formatting and other functions and thus is not available for data storage. As such, the actual capacity for data storage is less than what is listed on the products. For more information, go to Kingston's memory Guide at kingston.com/flash_memory_guide.

Pantech Breakout shows its darling face in the wild

Posted: 17 Sep 2011 03:39 AM PDT

The Pantech Breakout, Verizon's least-hyped LTE phone this side of the Droid Bionic, has seen a fair amount of time splayed out on paper without getting its fair share of closeups. This has finally changed, however, now that Droid-Life was able to get its hands on true-blue images of the device. It appears to be a unit that's already arrived in a Verizon retail outlet, lending credence to the rumor that the 4-inch Android handset will be available for our purchase next week. Unfortunately, Verizon's still acting as if the phone doesn't exist, so we'll just have to strum our fingers on the desk for (hopefully) just a few more days to see if it'll get acknowledged.

Mix Master Gloves keep your hands warm, control your iPod. Q-bert mitts still MIA (video)

Posted: 17 Sep 2011 02:34 AM PDT

Burton Mix Master Gloves
There's plenty of options for keeping your digits toasty while you peruse the music on your iPhone or iPod, but most of those still require you to fish the device out of your pocket to skip that Audioslave track that sneaked on there. Burton's Mix Master gloves skip all that physical interaction nonsense by sticking a wireless remote in the back of one of the mitts. You just plug a small dongle into your iDevice and it pairs up with the music-controlling hand-wear. Of course, if you're not the exceedingly lazy type, you could just sew a few cents worth of conductive thread into any standard pair of gloves and avoid coughing up $160 for the Mix Masters. If you're still curious there's a video after the break.

Targus to release new WiFi PAN-equipped Laser Mouse this September, flips Bluetooth the bird

Posted: 17 Sep 2011 01:06 AM PDT

Back in 2008, Ozmo Devices paired up with Intel to get its WiFi PAN (WiFi Personal Area Network) tech into low-power devices. Fast-forward to a few years later, tack on a new partnership with Targus and get ready for the first of those Bluetooth-less peripherals to hit the market. The company's new accessory teammate is planning to rollout a line of WiFi Laser mice that incorporate the OZMO2000 chip, with the first mouse to hit sometime this September. The unreleased AMW58US model will connect directly to your computer's WiFi receiver and packs a four-way scroll wheel, laser sensor and compatibility for Windows 7 -- batteries included. There's no pre-order page available at the moment, so you'll just have to sit tight and wait it out. Official PR awaits you after the break.

Show full PR text
Targus® and Ozmo Devices Partner to Develop Wi-Fi Mice

With A New Wi-Fi Laser Mouse as Its Inaugural Product, Targus' New Line of Wi-Fi Laser Mice Will Be Based on Ozmo's Industry Leading Wi-Fi PAN Technology

ANAHEIM, Calif. and PALO ALTO, Calif., Sept. 14, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Targus® Inc., maker of the world's top-selling laptop computer cases and accessories and Ozmo Devices, the leading provider of low-power Wi-Fi Personal Area Network (Wi-Fi PAN) solutions, announced today a technology partnership for Targus' new line of Wi-Fi Laser mice. The new mice will be based on Ozmo's OZMO2000 solution, which is the industry's first Wi-Fi PAN solution, enabling peripherals to connect directly to a laptop's built-in Wi-Fi receiver. Targus' new Wi-Fi Laser Mouse will be one of the first to implement Ozmo's unique wireless solution.

"Wi-Fi is ubiquitous today, and we are excited that our next generation of mobile PC peripherals is powered by Wi-Fi technology," said Carolyn Perrier, vice president of product management, accessories at Targus. "Our new line of Wi-Fi Laser mice with Ozmo's unique Wi-Fi technology offers a hassle-free connection to bring you optimal comfort, performance and usage."

"We are thrilled to see a brand name like Targus embrace Wi-Fi peripherals," said Bill McLean, Chief Executive Officer, Ozmo Devices. "This further illustrates the rapid market adoption of Ozmo's innovative and cost-effective solution. Ozmo is quickly establishing itself as a formidable player in the wireless HID (Human Interface Devices) market."

The new Targus Wi-Fi Laser Mouse (AMW58US) offers all the functionality of Targus' other mice, but without the need for wires or wireless receivers. It simply connects using your computer's Wi-Fi connection. The high-precision laser sensor allows for accurate performance on almost any surface. The integrated four-way scroll wheel allows you to scroll horizontally and vertically. The mouse instantly supports Windows® 7 task switching with the touch of one button. The mouse comes equipped with two high-quality Energizer batteries and is designed to provide up to 9 months of battery life depending on usage. The Targus Wi-Fi Laser Mouse will be available in September at an MSRP of $49.99.

The Targus Wi-Fi Laser Mouse along with other Targus accessories can be purchased at Targus.com as well as through leading retailers, VARs, e-tailers, and direct marketers.

Oscar winners crowd-sourcing the ocean with The Blu

Posted: 16 Sep 2011 11:44 PM PDT

Love the ocean, but hate holding your for breath for extended periods? Good news: a team of software engineers, composers, Oscar-winning animators and more have come together to recreate Davy Jones' locker in the cloud. Wemo Media is looking for a few thousand good artists for the project, to help create a massive simulation of life under the seas built on its Maker Platform. The project has been around for a bit, but is still in closed beta, making it a private development beach of sorts. You can watch an introductory video and request an invite at the source link below.

Tetris played on 6-foot LED matrix, controlled by DDR mat

Posted: 16 Sep 2011 10:55 PM PDT

6-foot Tetris controlled by DDR mats
Watching two people play Tetris against each other is only slightly more entertaining than watching your stoner friends duke it in marathon Tekken sessions (read: not entertaining at all). But, we gaurantee the video after the break is more interesting than it sounds. A trio of MIT students recreated the classic falling block game with six-foot tall arrays of LEDs (no cutesy Russia-inspired graphics here) and passed control duties off to a pair of Dance Dance Revolution mats. Look, just check out the video below and, if you're the ambitious type, you can get the code to create your own Tetris installation at the more source link.

[Thanks, Russell]

Samsung Focus S wanders through FCC en route to AT&T

Posted: 16 Sep 2011 09:38 PM PDT

Charts, diagrams, charts, measurements, and more charts. This summation of nearly every document that passes through the FCC sounds only slightly more fun than staring at the Matrix all day, yet we still find ourselves a bit giddy when seeing highly anticipated phones take their turn getting the Federal nod of approval. And so it is with the Samsung i937, which is most likely the Focus S -- one of three tantalizing Windows Phone choices aimed at reaching stores "this fall." It's about what we'd expect, really: aside from sporting the usual AT&T frequencies, there's not much more that we can discern from the pages and pages of numbers and colorful pictures that depict phone radiation. Exciting stuff, we know, but Windows Phone 7.5 is at least one step closer to being in the clutches of our lonely mitts.

Verizon starts 'optimizing' (read: throttling) network for the most data hungry users

Posted: 16 Sep 2011 08:35 PM PDT

We can't say we weren't warned, since Verizon updated its data policy way back in February, but it's still a punch in the gut to hear its "network optimization" plan went into effect yesterday. A new policy page pointed out by Droid-Life explains how the policy will affect only the "top 5 percent of data users with 3G devices on unlimited data plans" (LTE and tiered data users are in the clear) by managing their speeds when connected to towers it has deemed are congested. Those conditions, termed network intelligence by Big Red, are what it feels separates this scheme from mere data throttling since it will only affect a few users (those consuming 2GB or more of data per month) at certain times and places, but it's hard to see it any other way. If you're one of those affected, expect a message on your bill or My Verizon account, although you may go into and out of the affected group depending on your usage. Hit the source link below for all the details -- anyone else think it's not a coincidence this policy popped up just before the iPhone 4 came to Verizon and is being implemented only weeks before the next iThing is expected to arrive?

Splitfish FragFX Shark 360 starts shipping for your first-person shooting pleasure

Posted: 16 Sep 2011 07:39 PM PDT

What better way to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Halo than the release of a new way to first-person shoot people on the Xbox 360? Splitfish today announced that its FragFX Shark mouse / analog stick hybrid controller device thingie is finally hitting the Microsoft console. The peripheral offers in-controller setup, customizable precision and should give you around 50 hours of play time on two AA batteries. The $80 device uses 2.4GHz wireless, but, as outlined before, requires a wired controller to get in on the action. More info in the press release after the break.
Show full PR text
SPLITFISH Announces The FRAGFX SHARK 360, Now Available in North America for the XBOX 360

Zurich Switzerland - September 15, 2011 -
Splitfish AG, the inventors of the world's leading high-end precision gaming mouse console controllers, today announced shipping of the long awaited FRAGFX™ SHARK 360, the world's first super precision mouse hybrid gaming controllers for XBOX 360™. The FragFX SHARK 360 is built for the hardcore competitive gamer and anyone who has dreamed of using the Holy Grail FPS combo of a mouse and analog stick to play shooter games the way they were originally intended. Now, the Xbox's crowning achievement, Halo, and upcoming megalithic releases like GEARS OF WAR® 3, CALL OF DUTY®: MODERN WARFARE® 3 can be played in the most intuitive and precise way possible. The SHARK offers superior customizability and exceptional precision unparalleled by normal controllers and comes standard with mappable - Function Buttons, on the fly mouse adjustment and a rock solid, lag-less, 2.4Ghz frevo-wireless system. Xbox 360 enthusiasts will also find it a breeze to adjust to the familiar button array on the mouse specifically set up with them in mind.

Additionally, the FRAGFX SHARK 360 is compatible with the PC and the Mac
"Our fans have been clamoring for an Xbox 360 version of the FragFX Shark and their input has been invaluable in creating this product.We're proud of the result, and we hope the Xbox gaming community likes it." In the increasingly competitive FPS arena, precision is key - and Splitfish has worked closely with some of the world's most prolific designers and world class hard core game teams and gamers such as #1 Global Learedboard COD player, Dennis Dozier (zDD), to perfect a robust and easy to adapt controller that brings the ultimate combination of mouse aiming and analog stick movement that can be used on an XBOX 360," said Jason Johnson, Head of Creative Development for Splitfish.

Key Features:

· Full XBOX 360, PC and MAC support
· Plug and Play
· Fast access to special features (e.g. macro, rapid-fire, button swap, stick swap, etc.)
· Play with the mouse on the XBOX 360 as you would do on a PC
· On the fly dead zone adjustment wheel
· 2 AA batteries (not included)
· NEW 50h + play time
· NEW 500h + power save standby
· Brand new wireless technology to 2.4 GHz
- Headphones and chat supported

The FRAGFX SHARK 360 is a significant step forward for the console gaming industry because it not only provides an almost perfect PC mouselike FPS experience for gamers on the XBOX 360, but also provides an easy to adopt, high end, fully programmable analog stick counterpart that make it possible for hardcore PC FPS fans to enjoy their favorite shooters on MAC or PC.

The Splitfish FRAGFX SHARK 360 lets you play FPS games on a console the way they were originally meant to be played - PLUS MUCH MORE. With the FRAGFX SHARK 360 you can intuitively aim with a mouse and adjust sensitivity on the fly as well as use advance functions like button remapping, turbo, wrist flick melee and much more with ease. With Splitfish's trademark lag free and highly precise one-to-one tracking you get the maximum FPS experience and total immersion.

The FRAGFX SHARK 360 is optimized for FPS shooters, but also has all the functions of a regular XBOX 360 controller - so it can be used for all games. Gamers do not have to go through complex procedures for button mapping or sensitivity adjustments, The FRAGFX SHARK 360 is designed for simple and intuitive on the fly customization. Also, just like its brother, the FRAGFX SHARK, the FRAGFX SHARK 360 has an uber long battery life of 50 hours of gameplay and 500 hours of standby on 2 AA batteries.

The FragFX Shark 360 has the same fundamental architecture as the Award Winning FragFx SHARK, but with the modified XBOX 360 FRIENDLY button configuration and the ability to function on XBOX 360, MAC and PC.

Please note - The FragFX Shark can be used on the XBOX 360 with ANY licensed wired XBOX 360 controller and yes, the headphones and chat are fully functional and can be used without any problem!

Taito InvaderCade for iPad brings invasive price tag (video)

Posted: 16 Sep 2011 06:51 PM PDT

Sure, Taito is a veritable grandfather of the arcade world, but ¥15,800 ($209) for a nostalgic iPad Space Invaders box with one lonely einzelkind fire button? Atari also has some standing in this business and its worthy alternative costs just $60, while even the genre-founding iCade now seems a bargain at $100. Anyways, check out the video after the break to see an old Japanese bloke waiting patiently for his refund.


4G Samsung Galaxy S II X coming to Telus, still as Herculean as ever

Posted: 16 Sep 2011 06:02 PM PDT

It looks like the Samsung Hercules name won't live on in mobile infamy, after all. Canadian carrier Telus is now the second (and last) company to shed the Greek God title in favor of the more traditional Galaxy S II moniker -- albeit with its own unique twist, of course. The company's got an official page up for its forthcoming flagship, dubbed the "4G Samsung Galaxy S II X." Talk about a mouthful, right? The device mirrors T-Mobile's version rather closely, improving upon the original model with a 4.5-inch Super AMOLED Plus display, HSPA+ download speeds of up to 42Mbps and -- here's where it gets interesting -- a 1.5GHz dual-core CPU. We're still unsure of the chipmaker responsible for supporting the AWS 4G radio, but our money's on the Qualcomm APQ8060. The ever-frustrating "coming soon" is attached to the page, which seems to be fairly common practice with new phones lately; regardless, we imagine enough people will be willing to forgive and forget once their future toy decides to show up.

Ex-Acer CEO Gianfranco Lanci joins Lenovo as a consultant

Posted: 16 Sep 2011 05:33 PM PDT

We haven't heard much from outspoken former Acer CEO Gianfranco Lanci since he left the company back in March of this year, but it looks like he's now ready to get back into the PC business in a slightly different role. Lenovo confirmed today that Lanci is joining the company as a consultant to "help develop and accelerate Lenovo's worldwide consumer business." Initially, those efforts will be mostly focused on Lenovo's integration of German PC manufacturer Medion, which it acquired in June for $907 million, but it sounds like this is more than just a short-term gig -- he does get to stay in Italy, though. Head on past the break for Lenovo's complete statement.
Show full PR text
Lenovo today confirmed that Gianfranco Lanci, former CEO of Acer, is joining the company as a consultant to help develop and accelerate Lenovo's worldwide consumer business. He will have a particular focus on Lenovo's integration of Medion, a leading German technology company acquired in July by Lenovo to significantly enhance its consumer presence, channels and capabilities in Western Europe.

Mr. Lanci will work closely with Yuanqing Yang, Lenovo CEO, and the rest of Lenovo's senior leadership team. He will be based in Italy.

Mr. Lanci is bringing his expertise to the world's third largest PC maker during a period of rapid growth and sustained success. Lenovo has been the fastest growing major PC manufacturer for seven straight quarters. The company recently announced its first quarter earnings, including record global market share (12.2%), record quarterly unit sales (more than 10 million units) and gains in virtually every region and product segment, while almost doubling profits year-to-year.

The following statement is attributable to Lenovo CEO Yuanqing Yang:
"Lenovo is fully committed to the PC industry. We are very optimistic about its future, while making significant long-term investments in the mobile internet. Because of this, exceptional people like Gianfranco are joining Lenovo. We have the right strategy, innovative products, strong culture, and a talented team. These key elements of our core competitiveness will help us to continue winning. Therefore, Lenovo is the best working place for talented people."

"As a consultant to us, Gianfranco brings years of expertise and insights to Lenovo that will help us strengthen our growing global consumer business. Talented people are joining Lenovo because of our commitment to the PC industry, outstanding momentum and optimism about the future. We will continue to strengthen our company by building the best global team in the industry."

Lenovo's Momentum
By advancing the right strategy of balanced, profitable growth and strong execution, Lenovo has outperformed the industry in all geographies, customer segments and product segments on its journey toward becoming one of the leading personal technology companies in the world


· Roughly doubled net profit YTY in Q1 ($108m)
· Fastest growing of top 5: 7 straight quarters (8X market in Q1)
· Outgrowing market: 9 straight quarters
· Grew 8X market (23.1% to 2.7%)
· Record units in Q1 of over 10 million
· #3 WW share in PCs; Record share of 12.2%
· Record share in both Mature and Emerging
· Number 1 in global relationship NB (Large enterprise/public sector)
· Number 2 in global commercial NB
· Number 1 in China and growing: Extended lead vs. competitors as China overtook U.S. for 1st time as world's largest PC market.
· Number 1 in global Emerging markets: Grew 3x the market rate (46.5% v. 14.7% to reach record 16.6%).
· Number 2 in WW all-in-one PCs

ABOUT LENOVO
Lenovo (HKSE: 992) (ADR: LNVGY) is a US$21 billion personal technology company serving customers in more than 160 countries, and the world's third-largest PC vendor. Dedicated to building exceptionally engineered PCs and mobile internet devices, Lenovo's business is built on product innovation, a highly-efficient global supply chain and strong strategic execution. Formed by Lenovo Group's acquisition of the former IBM Personal Computing Division, the company develops, manufactures and markets reliable, high-quality, secure and easy-to-use technology products and services. Its product lines include legendary Think-branded commercial PCs and Idea-branded consumer PCs, as well as servers, workstations, and a family of mobile internet devices, including tablets and smart phones. Lenovo, a global Fortune 500 company, has major research centers in Yamato, Japan; Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen, China; and Raleigh, North Carolina. For more information see www.lenovo.com.

LANCI BIOGRAPHY
Background
After Gianfranco Lanci was appointed President of Acer Inc. in 2005, he was promoted in 2008 to the position of Chief Executive Officer and President.
Gianfranco Lanci joined Acer Italy as Managing Director in 1997 right after Acer acquired the Texas Instruments (or TI) notebook division. When he became President for Acer Europe in 2000, he started building a strong European organization. As President of Acer EMEA in 2002, he introduced an innovative channel business model that successfully established record-making profits across Europe, Middle East, and the African markets. Lanci was then nominated as President of Acer Inc. International Operation Business Group or OBG in 2003. His responsibilities included overseeing all of Acer's business by coordinating sales and marketing activities in the Middle East, Europe, and America markets.

Gianfranco Lanci's Personal and Educational Background
Gianfranco Lanci was born in Turin, Italy in 1954. He graduated from the Politecnico of Turin where he also earned his degree in civil engineering. He worked for Texas Instrumentals Italia in 1981. He was also a country manager for the Printers Division, or PDD, and The Portable computers in Italy, Africa, and the Middle East. In 1996, he was appointed President for TI's Productivity Products Division of EMEA. Gianfranco Lanci became the Managing Director of Acer Italy when TI's portable PC business merged with Acer in 1997.

Windows 8 ain't fussy: runs on Macs, Surface, 128MB RAM, banana peel (videos)

Posted: 16 Sep 2011 04:59 PM PDT

Downloaders of the Windows 8 Developer Preview have been proving their mettle the best way they know how: by getting it to run on systems it was never really intended for. Brent and the folks at Codesnack win the Real Utility trophy for their successful Boot Camp installs. Josh Blake gets the Damn I Look Good By Candlelight trophy for making the OS run on the MS Surface in his living room. Meanwhile, Marcin Grygiel has awarded himself the I'm HARDCORE!!! title for somehow getting it to run on a PC with just 128MB. Treat yourself to some intimate video evidence after the break.

[Thanks, Prashanth]



Clearwire announces deal with China Mobile to accelerate TD-LTE deployment

Posted: 16 Sep 2011 04:37 PM PDT

The world's largest mobile operator and the heretofore scrappy WiMAX provider have linked arms to accelerate the rollout and adoption of time-division LTE (TD-LTE) across China. While there's little chatter about an infrastructure build-up itself, China Mobile and Clearwire have established an agreement "to cultivate a robust device ecosystem that supports multi-mode, multi-band devices with minimum component complexity and cost," with particular emphasis on the common 2.5GHz spectrum. More specifically, the collaboration will work to build up a high volume of TD-LTE chipsets and devices for commercial availability in 2012. If Sprint were to purchase (or make a significant investment in) Clearwire, this deal could be especially important, but for the time being, the company is finding some independence from the uncomfortable love triangle that's brewing between itself, Sprint and LightSquared. While there's no telling what sort announcement will come on October 7th, it's nice to see Clearwire secure an international lover that's willing to commit to a shared LTE vision. You'll find the full PR after the break.
Show full PR text
China Mobile and Clearwire Announce Collaboration on TD-LTE Devices

China Mobile, the world's largest mobile operator in terms of subscribers, and Clearwire Corporation, a leading provider of 4G wireless broadband services in the United States, today announced a collaboration to accelerate the development of TD-LTE devices. Specifically, the two companies agreed to work together to cultivate a robust device ecosystem that supports multi-mode, multi-band devices with minimum component complexity and cost.

China Mobile and Clearwire both support the global 2.5 GHz spectrum band for 4G deployments along with many other operators around the world. To date, both China Mobile and Clearwire have conducted successful TD-LTE trials and tests using commercially available/production-ready TD-LTE devices from numerous vendors. The two companies will work jointly to further accelerate the time-to-market availability of high volume TD-LTE chipsets and devices that should be commercially available starting in 2012. In addition, the two companies will collaborate to enable worldwide data roaming among TD-LTE, FDD-LTE and other 2G/3G networks.

"The availability and cost of TD-LTE devices are critical success factors for operators to deploy TD-LTE networks," said Mr. Jianzhou Wang, Chairman of China Mobile Communications Corporation. "The cooperation with Clearwire will leverage economies of scale in the two largest markets in the world to speed up the development of TD-LTE devices. We anticipate the widest variety and most cost effective high performance devices - modems, routers, smart phones and tablets - to provide end users with affordable advanced mobile broadband services."

"We expect to launch a next-generation LTE network that will offer more capacity than any other 4G network in the United States," said John Stanton, Executive Chairman of Clearwire. "By working with China Mobile, we fully expect to benefit from a device ecosystem aimed to support billions of potential users worldwide. This unmatched scale should reduce costs and increase choices for our customers in the years ahead."

Today's announcement further supports Clearwire's recent announcement of its intent to add LTE technology to its 4G network. By joining forces on TD-LTE technology, product, deployment and roaming solutions, China Mobile and Clearwire are well positioned to build a viable and competitive TD-LTE ecosystem for the highest demand 4G markets on the globe.

New PSN user agreement makes it harder to sue Sony: class actions out (sort of), arbitrations in

Posted: 16 Sep 2011 04:16 PM PDT

Hmmm, wonder what brought this on? Sony's gone and changed the lingo in its PSN user agreement to require binding arbitration to settle any future disputes -- making it much harder for disgruntled customers to get their day in court. Want to keep your right to sue? You can opt out of the arbitration requirement by sending a letter to Sony's lawyers saying you'll be keeping your courtroom entry card, thank you very much. Additionally, the change won't affect class-action litigation started by August 20th of this year. That means people whose privacy was compromised in the great PSN outage of 2011 that already filed suit needn't be concerned. For the rest of you, we'd advise breaking out the pen and paper ASAP if you wanna keep the halls of justice open for future complaints.

Windows 8 on a laptop in-depth preview (video)

Posted: 16 Sep 2011 02:45 PM PDT

Less than 24 hours after it went live on Microsoft's site, Steve Ballmer reported a whopping 500,000 downloads of Windows 8 Developer Preview. That's half a million copies, if not eager Windows fans. Well, you can count us among them. Although we were treated to some private hands-on time with a tablet optimized for the OS, we hadn't, until now, had a chance to use it on a laptop -- i.e., the computing environment where we spend most of our time, and the one where we're most used to seeing Windows, in particular.

For the past three days, we've been doing just that: getting acquainted with Windows 8 using the good 'ol mouse-and-keyboard combo. And while that might read like a redundant statement (what recent version of Windows hasn't accommodated a cursor?), Win 8 is a peculiar breed -- It's the first version of the operating system where finger input wasn't an afterthought, but a first-class citizen. It's clear that this time around, Windows is optimized for touch, but we had to wonder if that Windows Phone-inspired UI would present a steep learning curve, if it would get in the way while we tried to go about business as usual. So how's that working out for us? Suffice to say, we're not in Kansas anymore, so find your most comfortable chair and meet us after the break -- we've got oh-so many details to delve into.
Windows 8 Developer Preview (user interface and settings)

Table of Contents
Disclaimer
Installation
User interface
Multitasking
Navigation options
Web browsing
Windows Explorer
Task Manager
Performance and compatibility
Windows Store
Demo apps
Bundled games
SkyDrive and the cloud
Accessibility options
What about Windows Media Center?
Wrap-up

Disclaimer
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First off, this is not a review. It might look like one, it might even be longer than one, but it's nevertheless not a review. Our goal here is to do a deep dive on what it's like to use Windows 8 on a laptop -- something, obviously, that we've never done, but have been waiting to do for quite some time. And, as much as we have to say on the topic, this won't be the last you'll hear from us. We'll be following Windows 8 as it incubates, and will reserve full judgment until the final version ships -- presumably, a year from now or more.

Secondly, you'll notice we were pretty thorough here. Rest assured, we didn't do this for nitpicking's sake, but out of respect for the fact that Windows 8 is a big deal -- not least because it's a stark departure from the Windows you're used to. When we point out bugs or limited functionality, we don't mean it as a "gotcha!" moment. We never expected the developer preview to have the spit and polish of a final build, and we earnestly believe Microsoft's going to iron out many of these kinks over the next year. We're going into gross detail because we want to do the OS justice and, well, many of you are curious about such things. So without further ado, let's do this.

Installation
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Whether you download now or wait a year for the final version to drop, you'll enjoy a clean, in-place installation on top of Windows 7. Just know, though, that if you decide to give this early build a whirl, you'll find that after you download the .iso file of your choice (it's available in 32- and 64-bit flavors), you'll need to burn that image onto a DVD or load it onto a bootable flash drive. Even over the relatively speedy network in AOL's New York headquarters, downloading the 3.6GB file (64-bit, no developer tools) took about an hour. If you opt for the 32-bit version, expect a 2.8GB file (the 64-bit version with tools totals 4.8GB). To make things that much easier for ya, hit the source link at the bottom of this preview to survey your options.
WIndows 8 Developer Build installation

For the purposes of this preview, we tossed a 64-bit build onto an HP Pavilion dv6t, a machine configured earlier this year with a 2.3GHz Core i5-2410M processor, 6GB of RAM, a 7,200RPM hard drive and the 64-bit version of Windows 7 Home Premium. Once we got that hefty download squared away, the installation took 35 minutes, during which time our PC restarted multiple times. Before we hit the install button, we clicked through the requisite EULA, submitted to a quick compatibility check and confirmed that we did, indeed, want to preserve our user accounts and files. Once it was all over, we set up our WiFi network and skipped the part where we could have handed over our Windows Live account credentials (we ended up doing that later). After little more than half an hour, we were up and running, and had to do very little along the way to make that happen.

User interface
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The first time we caught a glimpse of Windows 8, we were as blown away as any of you by how pretty it was. So many of us had been aching to see something resembling Windows Phone come to life on a larger screen, and here it was, this tablet-friendly OS that might just help Microsoft narrow the tablet gap with the likes of Apple and Google. And yet, we always imagined that when it came to laptops, the traditional desktop -- not the Metro-style UI -- would anchor the experience. That we could shoo away the live tiles when we felt like getting real work done, using the apps we've grown used to.

As it turns out, even on a laptop the user experience is rooted in that Metro-inspired layout, and ignoring it isn't an option. We first realized this when we clicked the Start Menu, wanting to search for some app or file. Instead, clicking Start whisks you straight into Metro-land. We can't overstate how huge this is. We avail ourselves of the search bar in Windows 7 about as often as we Google miscellaneous tidbits. It's something we do unconsciously at this point, and while we did start to master the learning curve after just a few hours of hands-on time, we felt ourselves making a concerted effort to circumvent the problem using keyboard shortcuts.


In fact, this might be a good time to mention that you'll be using shortcuts a lot in Windows 8 -- sometimes out of necessity, and sometimes to compensate for what would otherwise be a tedious ordeal of leaping from the desktop to lives tiles and back. After sampling several shortcuts, we decided our favorite way to search for something is to click the Start button and then, once you're inside the Metro UI, simply start typing. You don't need to start typing inside a search field, mind you, but once you start writing you'll see one appear on the right side of the screen. Other ways to circumvent the search conundrum include pressing Ctrl-F or (a more circuitous option) hitting Ctrl-C to bring up the settings menu on the desktop, where you'll find system search, among other things.

In other scenarios, too, the OS feels shockingly unfamiliar. It's not obvious enough how to shut down the PC or put it to sleep. You can't press the Escape key to exit programs, although you can use it to leave the Start screen and return to the app you were last using. To leave an app, you have to press the Start button -- a process not unlike tapping the home button on a phone to minimize what ever app you have open. Funny how something that's become second nature for us on the mobile side feels so unnatural when we try it on a desktop.


What's more, some of the shortcuts specific to Windows 8 feel limited -- inconsistent, even. For example, you can press Start-Tab to toggle between open apps, but only two. So, as we were composing this preview, we had Paint open on the desktop and used that to paste in screenshots we took on the Metro side. This was a fairly clunky setup in that we had to press Start-Tab every time we were ready to dump a screenshot in Paint on the desktop (if you look at our galleries scattered throughout this preview, you'll see we repeated this process many, many times). But intermittently during all this, we launched the browser to check email and refresh our favorite blogs. Once we did that, Microsoft Paint was no longer one of our two most recently used programs, so if we tried toggling again, we found ourselves bouncing back and forth between Metro tiles and our browser. This meant re-opening Paint, which entailed searching for the program. (Eventually, we did what any experienced Windows 7 user would do and pinned our essential programs to the desktop.)


Thankfully, many classic Windows shortcuts, such as copy and paste, still work. Blessedly, Ctrl-Alt-Delete does, too. But even so, we emerged from this exercise more dependent on keyboard shortcuts than we ever were previously. To be clear, we don't mean this as a one-size-fits-all editorial. We're sure many of you live by shortcuts. But we, at least, have always been more likely to use them for things like word processing and photo editing than navigating the OS itself. Here, it's normal to set aside the mouse and use the keyboard instead. If you're like us, that could take some getting used to.

And yet, as alien as Windows 8 seemed at times, we often felt charmed. There's the inviting lock screen, for one -- customizable to your heart's delight. The log-in page has gotten a face lift, as have the simplified Control Panel, Task Manager, Windows Explorer and even the onscreen volume bar that appears if you press your laptop's volume or mute buttons. In particular, we loved seeing our home screen grow more and more personal as we began to configure Twitter, our RSS feed, Facebook and our preferred weather location. It's precisely this slick UI and personalization that's left so many of us Engadget editors enchanted by Windows Phone, and despite Windows 8's steep learning curve, we're glad these things made a cameo in Windows.

Multitasking
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You'll see us return to this theme throughout the preview, but because it's so important and our notes are so lengthy, we'll summarize it here: multitasking in Windows 8 is a pain. Much of that, as we said, has to do with the fact that pressing Start-Tab only allows you to toggle between your two most recent apps. If you're in the Metro-inspired part of Windows, at least, there are no buttons for minimizing, maximizing or restoring windows. You have to press the Start button to return home as you would if you were minimizing apps on a phone, and once you do, there's no dock showing all the apps you have open. And because there are no boxes to close windows, leaving an app isn't the same as quitting it. To do that, we've been using the Task Manager -- a place we're mainly used to visiting when things go awry.

What annoyed us even more is that the Start-Tab command didn't work after we ventured to the Metro UI to search for files. In one instance, we were web browsing on the conventional desktop, and pressed Start-F to find something. That whisked us to the Start screen, and once we found what we were looking for, we pressed Start-Tab, only to find it wouldn't take us back to our most recent app. We had to click the desktop live tile instead. Annoying.


On the conventional desktop side, the experience rings more familiar, but even then, we found ourselves making compromises. Pinning apps is essential -- something we love about Windows 7, but always thought of as more of a convenience than a necessity -- is key here. (There's always desktop shortcuts, too, but we've always preferred to keep this space free of clutter.) As always, pinning the apps makes them that much easier to launch, which you can't do by pressing the Start menu and combing through menus. At least here, you can minimize, resize and close windows, and find minimized apps in an orderly line along the task bar.

You can also slide your mouse over the left side of the screen to see a preview of the apps open on the desktop. Call us set in our ways, but this doesn't feel as complete a solution as opening apps from the system tray. Alt-Tab also works to cycle between apps, and if you hold Tab you'll see thumbnails for each appear on screen, which you can navigate with the arrow keys. (For us, at least, the cursor wouldn't settle on a box when we tried using a mouse.)

Thankfully, you can still snap two windows into place, with each taking up half the desktop. We'll take this over Start-Tab any day.

Navigation options
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We won't dwell on keyboard shortcuts any further, so instead we'll say this: we often felt most at home using our mouse / trackpad, but as you explore the OS, you'll see you don't (yet) have that luxury in every app. On the flip side, there were times when using the cursor was our only option, which disappointed us mightily. You see, your multitouch-enabled trackpad won't work here -- at least not now. So pinching and zooming is out, as is scrolling with one or two fingers. We missed these gestures sorely when paging through sites, our Twitter and Facebook feeds and lists of unread news stories.

Then there are the arrow keys. You can use the right-left ones to hop from one tile to another, and up-down to jump directly between home screens, bypassing all those individual tiles along the way. In some apps, the arrow keys don't work at all. We tried using them to scroll through our Twitter timeline, stories in our RSS feed and our list of Facebook contacts. No dice.

Web browsing
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This early build comes with a preview of IE10. Though it looks glossier on the Metro side and more like Internet Explorer's old self on the desktop, it's the same version. (However! Only the desktop version will support Flash, Adobe confirmed to us.) In our tests, we found they loaded webpages at a comparable pace.

You could, in theory, have IE open on both the desktop and Metro-inspired side, and each instance of the browser would have its own open tabs. The two don't talk to each other so if you migrated from the desktop to tiles and then opened IE, the blog post you left open on the desktop side wouldn't follow you. What's more, IE looks and feels slightly different on each side, which means the shortcuts aren't identical either. For instance, pressing Start-Z brings up a list of open tabs on the Metro side, but that's obviously not necessary on the desktop, where all of your tabs are already visible. What we're getting at here is that this is another instance where migrating back and forth between two different interfaces can feel disorienting.

Windows Explorer
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This shouldn't come as a surprise, but Windows Explorer has taken on the love-it-or-hate-it Ribbon UI, the interface that was born with Office 2007 and later spread to native apps such as Paint. It's almost as if Microsoft realized some people find the trove of exposed icons confusing, and made it so that the ones you can't use simply appear grayed out. For instance, if you click on a file, the icons for moving, copying, deleting and renaming it will light up in color. Take a step back to the Desktop directory, though, and those icons fade into something unusable.

Task Manager
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WIndows 8 Developer Preview (Task Manager)

Windows 8 ushers in a made-over Task Manager, which offers a comparable array of information but in an easier-to-digest layout. By default, when you launch Task Manager you'll see a simplified view that merely lists all your open programs (there won't even be a column confirming which ones are running). Click a drop-down menu for more details, though, and you'll see several additional columns outlining CPU, memory, disk and network consumption for each app. In Windows 7, you'd have to click on the performance tab to see these stats, which would be buried underneath those usage graphs you know and love. As for the graphs, they're still there under the performance section, except now they consist of colored lines on a white background, instead of a green-on-black scheme.

New to the Task Manager is a tab from which you can control startup items. We never had any problem running msconfig, but remember that in Windows 8 you can't just click on the start menu and type in that command to pull up the appropriate controls. Though there aren't any checkboxes in this startup manager, you can right click on items to disable them.

Performance and compatibility
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To be honest, we didn't expect Windows 8 to have a drastic effect on startup times one way or the other. And yet, after performing a cold boot we were greeted by Windows 8's log-in screen after just 16 seconds. (Loaded with Windows 7 -- and a formidable bloatware load -- it took a painful minute and 32 seconds out of the box, according to our test records.) It's funny, because once you're inside the speeds aren't exceptional. Not bad by any means; just not blazing. Anecdotally, apps sometimes seemed a bit slow to load, though we suspect at least part of that was thanks to the animated transitions. More disturbingly, we repeatedly had trouble waking our dv6t from sleep, something that wasn't a challenge when it ran Windows 7.

We so far haven't spent much time gaming, but we did take Batman: Arkham Asylum for a spin, and held pretty consistent frame rates of 60 fps with the resolution fixed at its maximum settings (a modest 1366 x 768 on this dv6t).

As you'd expect, at this early stage you won't have much luck getting your older peripherals to work on your newly upgraded machines. Just for kicks, we connected the dongle for Microsoft's own Explorer Touch mouse and naturally nothing happened. USB storage works just fine, of course.

As for apps, Microsoft has said that Windows 7 programs will work on the current build -- a claim we'd say is pretty accurate. We were able to install Firefox, FileZilla, Kindle for PC, AIM, Fraps, PCMark Vantage and 3DMark06 -- all without a hitch. You'll find, too, that the setup wizard guiding you through the typical installation hasn't changed either. We did encounter an error message when we first attempted to download Chrome, but got it to work on our second try.



Windows Store
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So far, we know that Windows Store will be home to "thousands" of conventional and Metro-style apps, which will be compatible with x86-, x64- and ARM-based devices. As this is specifically a preview of the Window 8 experience on a laptop, we'll focus just on the conventional variety for now. Truth be told, we don't really have any concerns about the forthcoming volume of compatible apps because as it is, we can think of very few programs that aren't Windows-compatible. Truly, we're more curious about the selection of touch-optimized ones, as Microsoft has never developed such a finger-friendly OS. Either way, the store isn't open to developers just yet, so these are all questions we'll have to save for another day.

Demo apps
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Windows 8 Developer Preview (native apps)

Headlines

By default, Windows 8 has a live tile for news updates, much the same way it has built-in stock and weather apps. We'll cut to the chase: it's one of our favorites this early build has to offer. More than anything, we like that you can search for different news sources and add as many as you want before clicking "Done." If building an RSS feed doesn't match your idea of sexy, just consider this -- on what essentially felt like a brand new computer, it was convenient to at least get our news stream up to date in under a minute.

Tweet@rama

Perhaps the most familiar of Windows 8's native apps is Tweet@rama, a three-pane program listing updates, your own recent posts and a list of the people you're following. There's also a button for uploading photos alongside your status message and the built-in spellchecker even tosses an accent mark over words like "cliché." Between the panes and the black background, anyone with TweetDeck experience should feel at home, though don't expect any functionality in the way of checking and responding to direct messages, searching key words or monitoring mentions. Also, remember we said Windows 8 doesn't play nice with our multitouch trackpad right now? We were actually using this app when we first noticed that -- imagine how annoying it is to have to click on a scroll bar to make your way through two hours' worth of unread tweets.

So, this might be a good time to come out and set some real expectations for these apps: while it's been fun to poke around, these simple programs, so slick yet feature-poor, will probably be better suited to the tablet crowd. There's no reason for us to use this instead of TweetDeck -- except for the fact that the Windows 8 experience isn't grounded in the desktop, but the live tiles.

Socialite

In addition to a native Twitter app, Microsoft threw in one built around Facebook, the preciously named Socialite. This is another example of how these native apps are really just a curiosity for people who can just as easily use a keyboard and mouse to use more full-featured apps. Although Socialite has a section for photo albums, it's really honed in on status updates -- both yours and your six hundred acquaintances. Through the app, you can see your newsfeed and also update your own status, though even when you're supposedly looking at someone's profile, you won't see info such as birthdays or relationship status. For what it is, though, it's intuitive, clean and pretty to look at.

NearMe

Also on board is NearMe, an app serving up local outdoorsy activities, bars, restaurants, sightseeing spots, cultural events, family-friendly joints, shops, spas and good places for people watching (in the New York City area, this means the Adidas outlet, apparently). Whatever the genre, you can sort the results by distance and rating. At this early stage, you can dig deeper to view a map or directions, or bookmark a favorite, but you can't view the place's website or read reviews (you can see how many reviews there are, and what the average star rating is).

Sadly, the recommendations seem incomplete right now, and are often irrelevant. NearMe recommends J. Crew to families, for example, while The Gap dominated three out its four top shopping recs.

Given what Microsoft has done with Bing, we see lots of potential here, and wonder why the app wasn't branded that way to begin with. Whatever the reason, we'd be shocked if the final version didn't improve on the functionality we see here while tapping into Bing in a more thorough way.

It's also worth noting that during our testing NearMe was the only app to crash. We knew something was wrong when the sorting drop-down only showed one option. When we tried to click on the drop-down menu again and, subsequently, return to the home screen, the app froze and then closed abruptly.

Alarms

Moving along, making sure we leave no stone unturned as far as apps go, this early build comes with an alarm clock. Adding them and setting the time / toggling between AM and PM is easy, though it's worth noting that at this time you can't customize how regularly these alarms go off (e.g., every weekday, weekends only).

Stocks

By default, the stock widget monitors the NASDAQ, but you can, of course, add whatever tickers you want (just press Start-Z to pull up a contextual menu on the bottom of the screen). As far as metrics go, you'll see the stock price, natch, which isn't real-time, but delayed, just as Google and Yahoo Finance's numbers are. You'll also see the last trade, the opening price, the range of prices for the day and past 52 weeks and, finally, the current trading volume. In other words, pretty much the same stats you'd expect to see if you visited Google, Yahoo or Bing Finance.

Scroll to the right in the stocks app and you'll see headlines pertinent to the stock or index you're currently viewing. We were pleased to see these stories came from myriad sources, as opposed to just a single wire, although you'll also find your share of dry, jargon-laced press releases.

Weather

The weather app has animated backgrounds reflecting the climate in your neck of the woods -- a touch that reminds us of HTC's Sense overlay. As you'd expect, it recognizes major cities such as New York and Mumbai, but its database also includes scads of smaller towns and cities, such as Morristown, New Jersey. If your town's on Microsoft's radar, it'll autocomplete in the search field as you start typing. Even if it doesn't, though, you can press enter and the weather app will serve up local stats. That's so long as it's real city, of course. We were able to get the weather for tiny Sherman, CT, but not fictional Dana Bella City, NY.

When you add your first city, you'll have the option of allowing Microsoft to change its weather info as your location changes. Either way, if you've got multiple cities programmed, you can scroll from left to right to view different forecasts and -- best of all -- watch the animated scenery change as you go. Whatever the city, you can view the weather as a short, one-box summary view, a five-day forecast or as an hourly report. If you like, you pin a location to the Start screen.

BitBox

BitBox is a basic synthesizer that lets you cull different electronic sounds and then see them visualized onscreen. Mildly hypnotic, might annoy people around you.

Notespace

As you'd expect, it's a native notetaker. Oddly enough, it includes all the elements of a good notepad app -- font and text color controls, the ability to capture and add photos and sound and the ability to transform texts into lists. The problem is, the interface doesn't make much sense, even with the help of instructions.

Ink Pad


Picstream

Picstream uses Flickr's APIs to stream a full-screen slideshow of random photos. Equally odd, you can sort by tags, but you can't actually search for specific key words that interest you. Rather, there's one option -- popular tags -- which shows three options ("Canon," "birthday" and "beach," as of this writing). This app would be much more compelling if you could access your own Flickr stream, or at least search users and tags.

Memories

Memories is a digital photobook, with pages and blurbs for captions. We'd like to make a suggestion for the UI, which is that we think people should be able to click on a caption to edit it. As it is, you have to press Start-Z for the settings, click "Edit" and then change the text in a pop-up box. We'd also like the option of changing the color and font for the copy. Some themes could be helpful, too. On the flip side, having to go into the settings to add and reorder pages feels intuitive.

Moped

Moped allows you to subscribe to audio programs -- podcasts, yes, but also language learning series. As with the RSS feed and other native apps we've told you about, it's tile-based, and in this case you can't navigate them using the arrow keys. As of this writing, the selection is skimpy (we counted 20-some-odd offerings), with established public radio programs such as This American Life accounting for the only ones we recognized. Given that Mango will support podcasts (presumably many more than this), we hope Windows 8 will, too, by the time it ships.

Paintplay

It is what it sounds like, kids. A drawing app -- a perfunctory one, at that -- which lets you doodle in a rainbow of colors. Though you can choose from six kinds of writing implements, six brush sizes and six transparency settings ( as well as undo any unwanted marks), there's no eraser tool, and you can't save any of your creations.

Measure-it!

One of the more esoteric apps you'll find here, Measure-It! calculates the measurement of lines and spaces you designate in photos (even ones you've taken with your computer's webcam).

Piano

What you have here is an onscreen keyboard on which you can play chopsticks to your heart's content, but there are also a handful of bundled classics (think "The Entertainer") that you can play along to in a kind of instrumental karaoke. You can also record and save whatever tunes you've made up. In the case of those pre-installed songs, specific keys will glow blue when you're supposed to hit them but, as you can imagine, this is tedious and un-fun if all you've got at your disposal is a mouse. As with Paintplay, we imagine this would make for a better time-waster on a tablet.

Bundled games
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Windows 8 Developer Preview (stock games)

Tile Space

In Tile Space, your goal is to rearrange a jumbled mosaic of tiles, each of which contains a piece of a larger photograph. The default level of difficulty is a 4 x 4 grid, though you can also opt for 2 x 2, 3 x 3, 5 x 5 and 6 x 6 boards. By default, the photograph you're trying to reassemble depicts a snow-capped mountain, though if that starts to bore you can select a new puzzle entirely. What we like best, though, is that you can build a puzzle out of your own photos, slideshows or videos (even snapshots taken with webcams).

5

Up next is 5 -- essentially, Tic-Tac-Toe with black-and-white balls instead of Xs and Os. As the title would suggest, the goal is to head the computer off as it attempts to line up five balls in a row. There aren't actually any instructions that go with the game, though we only had to lose to the computer once to understand what was going on.

Labyrinth

Another game too self-explanatory to merit instructions, Labyrinth involves guiding a ball through a series of increasingly challenging mazes. It's timed and though the game keeps track of the best scores, that record is always one that you've set. If you're playing this on a laptop, you'll need to use the arrow keys, as the game doesn't accept mouse input.

Zero Gravity

Starring an astronaut fit to take to an ice cream social (Microsoft's words, not ours), this kid's game involves using finger gestures (or, in this case, the arrow keys) to send 2nd Lieutenant Bennett flying through space, landing on floating pieces of pipe and other objects as he goes. Unlike 5, this game comes with instructions, though a bug thwarted our attempts to cut a game short and return to the home screen.

Treehouse Stampede

Yeah, we're addicted to a kids' game. What? In Treehouse, you've got this string of pink, muppet-like beings inching their way toward a treehouse, and you need to form words out of a string of on-screen letters before they reach the creatures destination. There's usually three letters, and they're always consonants, which means you'll have to get creative and build a longer word, instead of rearranging the letters to form one. In truth, the reason we like the game so much is probably that the computer seems so impressed when we turn "LSN" into "loosen" and rack up lots of points.

We did notice that the game freezes if you lose -- a bug we expect Microsoft will fix soon enough.

Check M8

It's chess, folks, replete with timed turns. It's worth noting that this game is easy to play with a mouse.

Tube Rider

Tube Rider asks you to take different pieces of tubing and build out a tunnel for Johnny the Surfer before he reaches the finish line. Of all the games, this was our least favorite -- not because it doesn't have the potential to be amusing, but because playing with a mouse dampens the fun.

Sudoku

We don't need to explain this one, right?

Word Hunt

This is essentially Boggle, with timed and un-timed modes. It's simple enough to use with a mouse, though we bet dragging your finger over adjacent letters would be more fun.

Copper

Copper's a game whose plot centers on a robot dragging boxes.

Flash Cards

As its name would suggest, what we have here are flash cards for kids, with topics including numbers, colors, shapes, the alphabet, fruits and veggies, the solar system, animals, landmarks and state flags (?!). There are also interactive quizzes in addition, landmarks, subtraction, the solar system and flags of the world and pesky state variety.

Air Craft

Air Craft, so far as we can tell, involves painting paper airplanes. We don't get it either.


SkyDrive and the cloud
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Microsoft has said that anything you've stored in SkyDrive will sync across your Windows 8 machines -- so long as your user account is tied to your Windows Live ID. You'll have the option of adding your ID when you first boot up the machine, but you can easily add it in the Control Panel. (At that point, too, your Windows Live ID password will be what you use to unlock the PC.)

Once we added our Windows Live ID credentials, we easily used the desktop app Windows Live Mesh to sync our shared folder with the copy stored in SkyDrive. If you've ever used SkyDrive before, you know that as you're uploading shared files you'll have access to them as they land in SkyDrive -- you don't have to wait for the entire folder to sync before peeking. We also had no problem downloading Word documents from SkyDrive and opening them in Windows 8 using WordPad. This is one facet of Windows 8 where you can expect a smooth experience, even at this early stage

Accessibility options
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So far, Microsoft's included several options designed to assist vision- and hearing-impaired users, as well as people with limited motor skills. Users can flip a switch to enable high contrast, enlarge onscreen objects and enable the ability to tap through web pages. In each of these cases, it's an either / or option. In other words, you can't, say, adjust how big things appear using a sliding scale.

Other options include the ability to press Windows + Volume Up to enable a magnifier, narrator or on-screen keyboard. You can also adjust the thickness of the cursor, selecting one of 20 gradients (the default is 1, the thinnest). Lastly, users who find notifications helpful can tweak how long they last, with the options ranging from five seconds to five minutes.

What about Windows Media Center?
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This early build of Windows 8 doesn't include Windows Media Center, so for now, native playback options are limited to Media Player, which handled a mix of .WMV and .MP4 files without incident. So it's unclear at the moment if Microsoft will take a one-size-fits-all approach -- will it be a staple on Windows 8, as it has been on most versions of Windows 7, or would that just make for bloated tablets? And what to do about the interface? Media Center has always had a look that's distinct from the rest of the Windows operating system, and we wonder how much, if at all, Redmond will rock the boat. As it is, mind you, we're bouncing between two UIs: Windows and Windows-meets-Windows-Phone. Can the OS handle Media Center's classic aesthetic -- essentially, a third UI for Windows 8 users to juggle?

Wrap-up
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After a few days with Windows 8, we're left with even more questions than we had when we started. Now that we know the learning curve is steeper than we imagined, and that those glossy live tiles anchor the user experience in a way the desktop used to, we're intensely curious about how Microsoft will tweak the OS between now and its ship date. And yet, we hope Ballmer & Co. can eke out a few concessions on the PC side, making it easier to hang around the desktop, if we so choose. We'd expect that over the next year or so, the engineers in Redmond will fine-tune the keyboard shortcuts, making them more intuitive and consistent. Ultimately, what we really want is for this to feel like a fluid, bilingual experience, for the transition between the desktop and mobile-inspired UI to be a smooth one. Not that that's what Microsoft necessarily has in mind, of course, but it's not a huge stretch to think that Windows 8 is the middleman operating system between what we've known over the past decade and the touch-inspired future that seemingly awaits. On all counts, we'll just have to stay tuned, but for now we remain intrigued, hopeful and cautiously optimistic. Windows 8 opens up all sorts of new form factor possibilities (dual screen machines with a purpose, anyone?), and we're downright thrilled to see what stops are pulled out in the next dozen months.

Engadget Mobile Podcast 104 - 09.16.2011

Posted: 16 Sep 2011 02:37 PM PDT

Manufacturers and service providers are really kicking it up a notch this week! AT&T will hit us with a big dose of speed on Sunday, Microsoft had a slew of mixed/delicious news for us at Build, and HTC's got its hands in a liiiiiitttttle bit of everything, from releases to maybe OS acquisitions. We'll lay it all out for you here, with an added touch of Volpe to round things out, on the Engadget Mobile Podcast.

Host: Myriam Joire (tnkgrl), Brad Molen
Guest: Joseph Volpe
Producer: Trent Wolbe
Music: Daestro - Light Powered (Ghostly International)

00:01:19 - Samsung Epic 4G Touch review
01:29:00 - Listener questions


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Adobe: yep, your Windows 8 system will support Flash -- sometimes (video)

Posted: 16 Sep 2011 02:16 PM PDT

Flash fans can breathe a collective sigh of relief -- Adobe has confirmed that the next version of Windows will, in fact, support work built on its once ubiquitous web publishing platform. Windows 8 PCs and tablets with x86 or ARM processors will support the platform -- in the more traditional desktop mode, that is. The version of Internet Explorer 10 built for that interface will play nicely with Flash. Those users who opt for the new Metro UI, on the other hand, will be out of luck on the Flash front, thanks to a lack of plug-in support. Between Adobe's work in the HTML5 world and the ability to build Flash-like apps using Air for the Metro interface, however, the company seems to have most of its bases covered in Windows 8 land. Check out evidence of Flash running in Windows 8 after the break, courtesy of Qualcomm.

Artega SE electric supercar is coming to the US, we go eyes-on

Posted: 16 Sep 2011 01:43 PM PDT

Artega SE electric supercar is coming to the US, we go eyes-on
With the Tesla Roadster's tenure drawing to a close and a proper two-seat replacement seemingly just a twinkle in Peter Rawlinson's eye at this point, there's something of a coming void in the world of the electric supercar. Artega would love to fill that with the SE. It's an all-electric version of the company's GT supercar, and while the GT will not see a release on American shores, we got confirmation from Artega that the battery-powered SE will -- eventually. The 375 horsepower motor drives the car to 62MPH in 3.9 seconds and a top speed of 126.5. Maximum range is 172 miles, but drive the car "more enthusiastically" and you can expect a more realistic 124.

The car was announced earlier this year at the Geneva Motor Show and here in Frankfurt we were able to spend a few minutes ogling its curves in a variety of interesting colors, including one model with a cut-away fender showing off the positioning of some of the 16 battery modules. 12 of those are scattered around the rear of the car, while four are up front, giving the car a rearward-biased 40:60 weight distribution. Cost is said to be 150,000 euro, or about $207,000. That's nearly twice the cost of a Roadster. Worth it? We'll see.
Artega SE electric supercar

Artega SE press shots

Sony MDR-NC200D noise-cancelling headphones review

Posted: 16 Sep 2011 01:00 PM PDT

Anyone who commutes to a big city knows how loud and distracting things can get -- whether it's the whine of a bus engine, a subway car's ca-clank or just that screaming baby seated behind you. Some folks may find cranking jams through their headphones helpful for blocking out the world, while others would prefer a bit more relative silence. Thankfully, in this modern age there exist headphones with noise-cancelling goodness to help you zone out.

Sony hasn't been a stranger to such cans, and recently introduced its $200 MDR-NC200D noise-cancelling headphones; a mid-range option for folks wanting similar benefits of its over-ear NC500D in an on-ear package. The claim is that these pups will reduce "98.2 percent of ambient noise" for up to 22 hours on a single AAA, so we sported the MDRs for the past few weeks as our primary set of headphones to hear for ourselves. You'll find all of the rock blockin' deets just after the break.
Sony MDR-NC200D noise-cancelling headphones unboxing and hands-on

Hardware


So what does that $200 price tag snag you? Once we got the NC200Ds unboxed we found an instruction manual, a zippered travel case loaded with the cans, a detachable 3.5mm right-angled cable, an airplane / right angle adapter and a AAA battery for juice -- not bad.

The NC200Ds won't turn heads as you wear them, but that's not meant as a negative knock -- they're a handsome shade of black and effectively functional. In hand, the headphones feel pleasing with a light, yet sturdy build and a variety of smooth textures from their faux leather pads to the slightly matted earcups. This set's a master of angles as well, making them easily portable in the most stuffed of bags. The yokes smoothly swivel from flat to about 90-degrees, fold in and out with a secure click and also provide a wide range of tilt for the earcups. All that mixed in with the moderately flexible build and metal-supported head-rails made for a presentation that's more than adequate overall, seeming right inline with the price.


Around the the left cup is is where you'll find all of the controls. Near the front we're greeted by an AI NC button (Artificial Intelligence Noise-Cancellation, more on this in a bit) and a sliding power switch, next to which is a green LED status indicator. On the underside is a 3.5mm input jack and beside it is a mic (also found on the right cup) for NC -- sadly, there's no voice support here. On back, you'll notice a Monitor button used for hearing the outside world with the headphones on, and lastly, there's push button pop-out slot for the battery up top.

The controls were accessible using just two fingers and a thumb, and with every button press we're greeted by chimes (one for AI NC, and two for Monitor) assuring us of our selection. As of this writing, we're on our second battery with the NC200Ds after about a week of using them for a few hours everyday. Basically, you'll get a fair amount of active listening and noise-cancellation time, but we'd recommend squaring off with a rechargeable battery -- unless you're trying to fund the pink bunny a new drum, that is. We should also note that if the battery does die on you the headphones will still work for music -- just without digital amplification or NC abilities.

Fit and Comfort


We really like that Sony decided to go with an ergonomic oval shape on the NC200D's earcups rather than a circular design. The fit here is very similar to Bowers & Wilkins' P5, which we consider very ear-friendly for longer bouts of listening, and slightly better in humid weather as the earpads didn't stick to our ears. Even after repeated multiple-hour sessions of rocking out at the office, these put very little pressure on our ears. Best of all, we experienced relatively no ear cartilage cramping. We found the head-rails have a longer range of extension than we've been used with others, making these a viable option for larger noggins. Lastly, you'll notice the cups fold flat; this allowed us to wear them around our collar when we needed an intermission without choking our neck. In a sentence, these are about as comfortable as one could expect a portable headphone to be without grabbing yourself a set of circum-aurals.

Sound


Let's talk about this AI NC business. With some noise-cancelling 'phones you'll have a few preset modes or the ability to manually create your own. Sony's approach, however, takes most of the control out of your own hands and instead lets the headphones decide. Anytime you press the AI NC button (with the power on) the cans pause for a few seconds to listen to the external noise and then initiate one of three digital noise-cancelling modes for planes, cars or indoor environments. Should you need to hear the hubbub around you, the Monitor button on the back lets it all leak in so you don't need to take them off -- perfect for when it's in-flight meal selection time.

We figure Sony's assuming most people will be using these with the power on, because in comparison to our B&W P5s, passive isolation wasn't nearly as good. Though, once we enabled the NC200Ds cancellation mode -- which is listed to provide up to 17.5 dB of noise reduction -- they were unsurprisingly the clear winner. We especially noticed it when listening to music, but that 98.2 percent figure from earlier mainly applies to sounds in the lower registers.

Noises such as engine rumble and air-conditioner hum were certainly done away with effectively, but anything in the higher areas remained a slight hiss -- if not sometimes a bit easier to discern. (Read: you'll be out of luck if you'd want to totally hush the yada yada of that chatterbox next to you.) There's no doubt that a load of ambient noise was welcomely taken out of the equation, although, in quieter areas the anti-noise signal pushing through its 40mm drivers can be just as distracting. Simply put, the noise-cancellation provided was quite effective so long as we used 'em within their limits.


Strapped 'round our ears there were two ways to go about our music: passively, or with the power on, actively with NC and Sony's own blend of equalization. We found that the passive sound was just so-so. Lots off bass seemed to be missing from the mix and the overall audio quality was on the tinny side -- not to mention a fair amount of external noise was seeping in. Once we hit the power on, though, it was like using a completely different set of 'phones. To describe the quality difference in a few words: bright and tight.

Essentially, all of the missing bass seems to come right back in along with the highs and mids becoming delectably crispy. Better yet, if you've got some low-bit rate files hanging out on your PMP, the NC200Ds seemed to make them sound a little bit better. To our ears, we'd say there's a fair bit of compression added in achieving this -- audiophiles be warned, as pleasing as the mix is, it's totally a colored sound.

As far as volume levels go, we noticed that with noise-cancellation off we'd need the volume at ten or above (out of a possible 20) on our Zune 30GB while on a bus, which still wasn't ideal, but it was all our ears could handle. Conversely, with it on we didn't need to place the volume past seven to be almost completely immersed in our music. Overall, the NC200Ds made a welcome difference whether we were commuting on a bus or subway car, or just typing away out our desk in the office.

Wrap-up


Everything said, we enjoyed our time with Sony's MDR-NC200D noise-cancelling headphones. The fit is excellent, the active sound quality is pleasing, the build quality is solid and most importantly, the automatic noise-cancellation works seamlessly and easily. Our main gripe is that the passive sound quality is well, passable, but if you're picking up these headphones we'd imagine you'll plan on using 'em with the power on. On a lesser note, an in-line remote would've been welcome along with a built-in rechargeable battery. Nitpicks aside, the NC200Ds delivered well enough in most aspects to warrant the $200 asking price in our eyes. They're currently available from Sony if you're looking for this kind of kit, just don't expect to drown out your roomie's Glee addiction.

'Arduino: The Comic' will teach you to stop worrying and love programming

Posted: 16 Sep 2011 12:41 PM PDT

Ever wanted to learn DIY programming on the Arduino, but aren't interested in trawling through stacks of dusty technical manuals? Then pay attention: artist Jody Culkin has produced a paneled primer that explains electrical engineering from Ohms all the way through to building your own dimmer switch. Friendly, informative and most importantly, brief, by the time you've finished it, you'll be dashing down to IKEA to build your own Luxo Jr.

Apple strikes settlement with NYC vendors accused of selling counterfeit products

Posted: 16 Sep 2011 12:22 PM PDT

Remember that lawsuit Apple filed against a pair of Queens stores accused of selling fake iDevice accessories? Well, it looks like it's coming to a close. According to Reuters, Cupertino has reached a settlement with the two Chinatown-area retailers, both of which have agreed to hand over all products emblazoned with the Apple name or logo. If the settlement is approved, the two vendors, Fun Zone and Apple Story, will have five days to clear all counterfeit iPod and iPhone accessories from their inventories, along with any allegedly trademark-infringing promotional materials. The defendants, who maintain their innocence, would also be barred from destroying any records of sales, manufacturing or distribution of the unauthorized cases and headphones -- presumably as part of Apple's ongoing crusade against counterfeiters. Apple Story, meanwhile, would have to change its name, which bears an obvious similarity to another well-known outlet. The proposed settlement was filed with a Brooklyn District Court on Thursday and now awaits the approval of US District Judge Kiyo Matsumoto. Neither Apple nor the defendants have commented on the case.

Obama signs America Invents Act into law, makes patent reform a reality

Posted: 16 Sep 2011 12:05 PM PDT

Patent reform's been bandied about on Capitol Hill for years now, and last week we finally got both houses of Congress to agree on the language to make it happen. Today, in what was a foregone conclusion, President Obama has finally made the thing official by signing the America Invents Act into law. In doing so, he made the dream of a first-to-file patent system in the US a reality. Of course, it won't go into effect for another 18 months, so we'll have to wait awhile before we find out if it can curb all those companies' litigious inclinations. Video recap of the patent reform process after the break.

at 11:50 AM

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