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Posts Tagged ‘Good Reason’

Windows Phone 7 Series device from Samsung is just a hacked i8910 HD

We couldn’t shake the feeling that the mysterious Samsung-branded Windows Phone 7 Series device being passed around at MIX10 this week was just a warmed-over i8910 HD, and it turns out there’s a very good reason for that: Samsung says it is a warmed-over i8910 HD. Even crazier, TechRadar writes that its contact at Samsung basically pegged the stunt entirely on Microsoft, simply saying “they used the i8910 HD to demo Windows 7″ and that “this demo was a one-off.” The whole thing reeks of the original Zune, which began life as a Frankenstein’d Toshiba Gigabeat — but we don’t think this new trick is going to make it all the way to retail since the i8910 HD clocks in with 640 x 360 resolution (WP7S requires 800 x 480) and a processor that falls well short of the standard-issue 1GHz Snapdragon. At any rate, we’re trying to get the straight dope on this from Microsoft now that Samsung’s washed its hands of it and we’ll update you when we’ve got more.

Windows Phone 7 Series device from Samsung is just a hacked i8910 HD originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 16 Mar 2010 21:39:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Last Post On Sarah Silverman v. TED

This is the last time we write about this, promise.

But it turns out that a week before the super-liberal TED crowd was shocked by comedian Sarah Silverman’s repeated use of the word “retarded” on stage (so much so that TED organizer Chris Anderson tweeted how “god-awful” she was), she had agreed to donate her time to a fundraiser for children with Down syndrome.

She was ridiculing Sarah Palin’s whole argument that the word “retard” can’t be used.

The crowd, mostly bay area wine and cheese liberals, should have been cheering her on. But it went over their head, and TED stepped in it.

So just to recap, TED invites Sarah Silverman, a shock and insult comedian, to the event to give a talk. She turns up and shocks and insults, but for a good reason. The crowd doesn’t get it even though it plays right into their politics, and the event organizer trashes her publicly. Silverman hits back on Twitter, and there’s a quick cameo by Steve Case in the whole drama. Then it turns out Silverman is already donating her time to help fight the very issue she brought up in the talk.

In honor of the whole episode, TechCrunch is purchasing 10 tickets to Twenty Wonder on March 6 in Los Angeles on behalf of TED and Chris Anderson. If you’d like one of the tickets, let us know below and the first ten get them (say if you want two to bring a friend). Or buy your own. It’ll go to a much better cause than the $6,000 TED attendees spend to feel good about themselves for a couple of days.

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Google’s Superbowl ad will make you cry a little bit

Admit it: you’re crying a little bit now, aren’t you?

Now, here’s the thing: this ad, from Google’s “Search Stories” YouTube channel, is from back in November, but John Battelle says he’s got a source telling him that ‘Parisian Love’ is the one that will air tomorrow night, during the third quarter of the SuperBowl. Either way, Google’s Eric Schmidt tweeted that he couldn’t wait to watch tomorrow, in addition to something about “hell freezing over.” So… that’s the first good reason we’ve heard to tune in. You with us?

Google’s Superbowl ad will make you cry a little bit originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 06 Feb 2010 22:35:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple gets a patent on smart screen bezels

Apple might have finally released the iPad, but the rumor mill is already on to prognosticating about the next rev — and as usual, Apple’s patents and patent applications are everyone’s favorite place to start. (And for good reason, really — that very first design patent we inititally noticed way back in 2004 is exactly what the iPad looks like, down to the bezel and Dock connector.) The latest tidbit is a patent granted earlier this week on an intelligent touch-sensitive bezel, which would essentially extend the touchpanel beyoned the edges of the screen to create an entire border of context-specific soft buttons — the iPod app might have playback controls at the bottom, while Safari could put the navigation bar down there and Pages could do formatting stuff at the top. It’s sort of interesting — Palm similarly extends the touch area beyond the screen on the Pre and the Pixi, but not quite like this — but we can’t see how touching the bezel next to an on-screen label is much better than just pressing the screen. Of course, there’s no guaranteeing Apple’s actually going to use any of this in any future products whatsoever, but we’re sure that won’t stop some analyst from waving their magic analyst wand and saying their “supply checks” have indicated a major ODM is already producing these. It’s nice that the world is so predictable sometimes, isn’t it?

Apple gets a patent on smart screen bezels originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Feb 2010 22:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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How to Hack Your Android Phone (and Why You Should Bother)

Do you want to take control of your Android phone? By “rooting” your device, a process similar to “jailbreaking” an iPhone, you can install custom ROMs (images) which add stability and speed improvements to Google’s mobile operating system as well as install new features developed by the hacker community themselves. The procedure involves running commands that enable total access to the device. For non-developer types, hacks like these sound scary, but by following the instructions below, you can take control of your Android phone in only a matter of minutes. The end result is a truly “open” device which you can modify to your heart’s content.

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Why Hack Android?

So why would you want to hack your Android phone? For those with older handsets, rooting the device lets you install customized ROMs which can deliver major speed improvements and performance increases. For example, the popular CyanogenMod, created by one of Android’s most notable hackers, optimizes performance for both the G1 and MyTouch 3G handsets.

Another good reason to root your phone? Multi-touch. One of the surprising omissions from Google’s own Nexus One handset, for example, is the ability to use more than one finger at a time to operate the device. Although available on iPhone from the start, the Nexus One excludes this valuable feature from its mobile operating system. Why? No one knows for sure, but it might have something to do with some patents Apple owns. But that’s no matter to the hacker community. Thanks again to cyanogen, Nexus One owners can enable the feature by copying some files over to their device. Other Android owners can perform similar procedures to enable multi-touch web browsing. But before you can get started with any of these hacks, you first have to root the phone.

How to Root Your Android Phone

However, for novice hackers, “rooting” the phone sounds like it may be easier said than done. Although seemingly intimidating, by following a few simple steps anyone can do this with ease.

Before getting started, remember to back up your phone, including your contacts, SMS messages, files, and photos.

1. The first step is to download and install Superboot, a boot image that, when flashed, will root the device the first time you boot up. You can grab a copy of the Superboot zip file from the Modaco forums here.
2. Once downloaded, extract the files it contains to a directory on your computer, just like any other zip file.
3. Now put your Android phone in bootloader mode. (Note, owners of a retail N1 should see instructions here).
   • To do so, turn off the phone, remove the battery, and plug in the USB cable. When the battery icon appears onscreen, pop the battery back in. Now tap the Power button while holding down the Camera key.
   • For those whose Android phones have a trackball, you have an even easier method of doing this: turn off the phone, press and hold the trackball, then turn the phone back on.
4. Depending on your computer’s OS, do one of the following:
   • Windows: Double click ‘install-superboot-windows.bat’
   • Mac: Open a terminal window to the directory containing the files, and type ‘chmod +x install-superboot-mac.sh’ followed by ‘./install-superboot-mac.sh’
   • Linux: Open a terminal window to the directory containing the files, and type ‘chmod +x install-superboot-linux.sh’ followed by ‘./install-superboot-linux.sh’
5. That’s it, your device has been rooted!

If those instructions confused you, check out YouTube for instructional videos instead. Here’s one for rooting the myTouch 3G or G1, here’s one for the Motorola Droid. Here’s another. There’s also an alternative rooting method involving 1 click demoed here. You get the idea.

Now What?

Now that you’ve rooted your Android phone, you can get busy adding features, functionality, and other hacks. This is the fun part! LifeHacker offers 5 great reasons to root your phone, for those wondering why you would bother to do this.

Our favorite reasons?

1. Multi-Touch

First of all, Nexus One users can enable multi-touch on their devices. RedmondPie has a good how-to on this:

Meanwhile, Droid owners can hack their phones for multi-touch web browsing:

T-Mobile G1 owners can do this too following the instructions here.

2. Mods for Performance Improvements (and More)

G1 and myTouch 3G owners can follow this tutorial to install the popular CyanogenMod on their devices which boosts performance and speed, among other things. Here’s a video tutorial on this via AndroidandMe.com: 

If you need more information, visit the Cyanogenmod Wiki for all the details on this custom ROM. And stay tuned to the latest Cyanogen news via the this website. 

3. Extra Apps and Features

For more fun hacks, try these:

Anyone with a rooted handset can set up Wi-Fi and Bluetooth tethering using this app. The ever-popular Apps2SD software lets you migrate your Android apps over to your SD card, freeing up room on your phone. You can also install custom themes, ringtones and alerts.

More?

If you’ve hacked your Android phone, share your tips and tricks in the comments. Or if you have links to other good hacks, let us know.

Image credit: rooting android via ryebrye.com

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Google’s Nexus One censors your voice-to-text input, we #### you not

It’d be kinda funny if someone was live-bleeping your profanity, right? Sure, but five minutes later you’d sober up to regret and lingering annoyance. Turns out the Nexus One does it for real, courtesy of Google’s speech-to-text engine — it replaces the notorious four-letter F and S words with a ‘####,’ which is a more dramatic take on the Zune HD’s now-obsolete Twitter censorship. As silly as this sounds, Google has come up with a good reason:

We filter potentially offensive or inappropriate results because we want to avoid situations whereby we might misrecognize a spoken query and return profanity when, in fact, the user said something completely innocent.

Kudos for caring, but it wouldn’t hurt to have an on / off option either — after all, it’s not like we’re asking for pinch-to-zoom here, and we’ll promise to use a swear jar.

Google’s Nexus One censors your voice-to-text input, we #### you not originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 24 Jan 2010 16:49:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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NVIDIA outs 300M mobile graphics series, causes little excitement

Many a mind might’ve strayed from all the CES crazy-talk about future tech and wondered as to what exactly is going on in the war against bad graphics on otherwise totally sweet laptops. The answer from NVIDIA is, disappointingly, not much. The green giant of GPUs quietly snuck out its 300M mobile GPUs over the turn of the year, and there was good reason for the lack of fuss — the top tier GeForce GTS 360M sports the same number of processing cores as its 260M predecessor, accompanied by the same 2GHz memory clock and identical 128-bit memory interface. But don’t despair yet, sailor! There’s the stark omission of any GeForce GTX models among the new 300Ms, which should fuel hopes that this gap in what NVIDIA calls the enthusiast market will be filled by Fermi-shaped chips come March of this year.

NVIDIA outs 300M mobile graphics series, causes little excitement originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 13 Jan 2010 06:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A review of the iMac 27" Core 2 Duo: yep, it’s still an iMac

Though users in general—and Mac users in particular—are quickly moving to a notebook-dominated world, Apple’s iconic iMac remains a strong seller in the desktop market. And for good reason: aside from the obvious portability offered by a notebook, the sleek machine offers more bang for your buck than a mobile, but without any of the ugliness that typically comes with a desktop machine. Apple’s latest iMac offerings continue this trend by refining the cosmetic aspects of the machine and adding just enough new stuff on the inside to make things interesting.

It has been just over two years since Apple last revamped the iMac’s design, and the refinements are largely worth it. The new iMac now comes in three processor flavors and two screen options. The stock processor options are either the 3.06GHz Intel Core 2 Duo (the same processor offered in the last-generation iMacs, but with faster configurations) or a 2.66GHz Intel Core i5 (the first quad-core option to come to the iMac), and you can get a 2.8GHz Intel Core i7 as a build-to-order option. For the display, the 21″ iMac has now morphed into the 21.5″ (to accommodate a 16:9 aspect ratio), and the high-end option is now 27″.

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