Unbeknown to you, you’ve just stumbled upon this week’s Ask Engadget. If you want to get in on this action, feel free to drop us an inquiry at ask at engadget dawt com. Before you get those gears turning, we’d invite you to chime in on Mitch’s question below:
“With the upcoming release of Ion-based “nettops,” I’ll be in the market to buy one and I’ll also be looking to buy a wireless keyboard and mouse for my living room. Some things I would like to see on the keyboard are prices below $100 and backlit if possible. Media buttons would be nice but aren’t totally necessary. Thanks!”
Timely question, Mitch. Considering that the AspireRevo is just the first of many miniature PCs that’ll undoubtedly be headed to dens across the globe, we figure you’re not alone in wondering about the perfect keyboard to pair with it. So, readers — whatcha got?
Sound familiar? Indeed, this isn’t the first time T-Mobile has offered a Sidekick LX — but much like last year’s simply-named Sidekick, the carrier is once again carrying forward branding while totally revamping the hardware. The 2009 edition of the Sidekick LX is thoroughly new and pretty much nails every item on every Sidekick fan’s wishlist: GPS, 3G data, an absolutely glorious 3.2-inch full wide VGA display, and super-tight integration with Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace. You’ve also got a 3.2 megapixel AF camera with LED flash, microSD expansion (T-Mobile throws a 1GB card in the box), video recording and playback (including YouTube access), stereo Bluetooth, quadband EDGE, and HSDPA 2100 for high-speed coverage when you’re galavanting around Europe. The ace up T-Mobile’s sleeve, though, might be Exchange ActiveSync support, which will be coming via the on-device software catalog shortly after launch. It’s available for pre-sale to current T-Mobile customers starting today — everyone else will have to wait until May 13 — but either way, you’ll be paying $199.99 after rebate on contract in your choice of “carbon” or “orchid” finishes. Check out all the snazzy photography below — and follow the break for our quick first impressions of the phone.
During the past couple of weeks, we’ve seen pieces of the puzzle falling into place: Leaked images and internal memos, FCC approval, a scheduled New York launch event; However, Thursday night, T-Mobile put all the speculation to rest and added the final and definitive piece to the puzzle. The end product? The new T-Mobile Sidekick LX.
Not to be confused with the original Sidekick LX, which it will eventually replace, the Sidekick LX 2009 offers a slimmed down design and some great new features, including 3G, Flash video support, and Twitter integration. Current Sidekick owners will get first dibs on the new device. Online presales start now for a price of $199 with a two-year contract. If ordered by April 30, customers will receive their Sidekicks on May 12; if ordered after April 30, the device will be delivered within 7 business days. For everyone else, the Sidekick LX will be available in stores nationwide and online on May 13, but final price had not yet been determined.
To come clean, we actually got a preview of the T-Mobile Sidekick LX at CTIA 2009, but we couldn’t say anything because of nondisclosure agreements. However, now that the cat’s out of the bag, we can talk about all the features and our first impressions.
You may have thought that the previous world’s most accurate clock was good at keeping time, but it’s apparently nothing compared to this new strontium atomic clock developed by scientists at the University of Colorado, which is supposedly more than twice as accurate and just as atomic. To achieve that impressive feat, the scientists made use of the same so-called “pendulum effect” of atoms as before, but took things one step further by holding the atoms in a laser beam and freezing them to almost -273 degrees Celsius, or the temperature at which all matter stops resonating. In clock terms, that translates to about one second lost every 300 million years. Of course, that’s still one second too many for the researchers, and they say they “dream of getting an atomic clock with perfect precision.” You just know you never want to be late for a meeting with these guys.
This article was written on April 08, 2008 by CyberNet.
Time Saving Tuesday
How often do you open and save files on your computer? I’m sure that even the most casual users will do it several times throughout the day. Whether it be adding an attachment to an email, uploading a photo to a website, or simply saving a document you’ve been working on… opening and saving files is a part of our computer-driven lives.
Now the question of how to speed up the process comes into play. Most of the time spent opening or saving files is probably navigating through hierarchy of never ending folders on your computer that you’ve meant to cleanup for months. We’ve all been there, and luckily we have some excellent solutions for the Windows users out there!
–Vista Favorite Links–
First off Microsoft has made a valiant effort of addressing this problem in their latest Windows Vista operating system. When you go to open or save a file in Vista you’ll likely see a screen similar to this:
(Click to Enlarge)
Along the left side I’ve highlighted a section labeled Favorite Links. The Favorite Links is designed to serve as bookmarks for the folders you use the most on your computer. Vista ships with common bookmarks to the desktop, documents, music, pictures, and more, but you can add or remove them as you please.
If you come across a folder that you want to add just drag it into the Favorite Links. The order for the shortcuts can be changed at any time simply by dragging and dropping them where you would like. And if you want to remove one of the shortcuts just right-click on it, and select the Remove Link option. Nice and simple… just the way I like it.
This is actually the application that sparked us to write this article. It wasn’t until a few weeks ago that a free version of Direct Folders emerged, and there has been quite a bit of buzz about it around the Internet. The free version will be more than enough for most of you, and it’s actually quite slick as to how it works. Once you have it installed just double-click with the left mouse button in an empty area of Windows Explorer (or an Open/Save dialog):
(Click to Enlarge)
You should see a menu popup, and at first glance there isn’t much there. What you need to do is go through all of your favorite folders and add them to the list. You can do this by navigating to a folder that you want to add, double-clicking in an empty space with the left mouse button, and then choosing the Add here option.
The nice thing about this is that there are no buttons that clutter the interface, which is something many of you will appreciate. The one thing that I don’t like is that it’s sometimes a hassle to find an “empty space” to double-click.
This is an open source project that I’ve used off and on again for the last few months. It has several advanced configuration options that power users will love, and even has a few features that almost any application will be able to benefit from.
This program works a little differently than the Direct Folders previously mentioned. FileBox eXtender adds a few buttons to the Titlebar of Windows Explorer and the dialogs. The folder icon with the heart is the one you want to look for because it’s where you can store your favorites:
(Click to Enlarge)
Next to the heart folder is another button with a clock, and that menu will contain folders that you’ve recently accessed through the open and save dialogs. That’s pretty smart since you’ll likely be pulling up the same folders over and over again.
There are two other icons you’ll see in other applications aside from just Windows Explorer:
The up arrow will roll up the current window collapsing it down to merely the Titlebar. It’s just like WinRoll.
The pin button will force a window to remain on top regardless of whether it is the window currently in focus.
Any of these buttons can be removed from the Titlebar by going through the configuration options, but it’s nice knowing that you’ll get some additional features that can be used outside of the Explorer windows.
–Overview–
Now we want to know about any tricks you use to make opening and saving files a speedy process. Drop off your tips in the comments below.
Looks like Apple finally has something to say to Lauren, Giampaulo, Lisa, Jackson, and any future laptop hunters showcased in Microsoft’s new commercial series. In a statement to Macworld, spokesperson Bill Evans goes through the usual list of touted Mac features — security, stability, design — before quipping, “a PC is no bargain when it doesn’t do what you want.” Ouch. He continues by “agreeing” with Microsoft that, yes, everyone does think its computers are cool. We don’t expect Redmond’s ready to end the ad campaign anytime, and as enjoyable as this statement is, our only hope is that the gang at Cupertino ups the ante and retaliates tit-for-tat by sending Hodgman on an filmed adventure through Best Buy.
In 1994, I painstakingly crafted the greatest hip-hop mixtape cassette I would ever make, comprised solely of songs on the radio at the time. I was 9.
While Bill Gates was becoming a one-man megapower, Steve Jobs was getting lost in a sea of ego and suck, and Nelson Mandela was inspiring people across the globe, I was sitting by my cheap RCA CD/Tape boombox trying to get the hang of long division.
Most my school nights in the fourth grade were spent doing homework by my boombox listening to San Francisco hip-hop radio station KMEL when it was still great. Bay Area hip hop, top 40 hip hop, classic joints, R&B, whatever—they played good music back then. And I recorded it.
Like I mentioned in the tribute to boomboxes, it was all about timing when you made a real mixtape; tape had to be queued to the right place, you had to know just when to hit play (before the lyrics started, after the DJ stopped talking), and you had to pay attention so you could stop recording right as it ended.
My tapes of choice were the Memorex joints with the bright colors and geometric shapes. Classics. What I chose to put on those tapes wasn’t always as classic, but the fact that I pulled it together to craft this one mix makes me proud of my younger self.
The best part was when we got to go on school field trips, because I not only got to pop my tape in my walkman to keep me entertained, but my friends had mixes and walkmans of their own. So we’d swap and share during the bus rides to wherever. Those were better days.
Back to my main point— the mix is filled with West Coast hip-hop from the era, but imbued with a splash of east coast and a touch of R&B. This is my handcrafted, childhood masterpiece. I’m sure, due to the faults of time, a couple songs are missing or mentally amalgamated in from other tapes. But the essence is more or less the same. Enjoy. (Photo courtesy of TapeDeck.org)
Dr. Dre and Snoop Doggy Dog – “Ain’t Nuthin But a G-Thang”:
The “1, 2, 3 and to tha 4” still gets me happy to this day.
Domino – “Ghetto Jam”:
I had completely forgotten about this song until I started thinking about the mixtape again. When that happens, you realized it’s a song that only could have come out of a given era.
Tevin Campbell – “Can We Talk”:
Ok, maybe not as imposing as some other selections on this mix, BUT I WAS 9! And it’s still a good song.
Snoop Doggy Dog – “Gin and Juice”:
I have memories of sitting in my dad’s car listening to this track: me rappin about endo, and gin, and money, my dad looking at me like I was a damn moron.
Dru Down – “Pimp of the Year”:
A wise friend once said, “Dru Down sellin’ bitches quick dreams here mane!” I concur.
E-40 featuring The Click, D-Shot, B-Legit and Suga T – “Captain Save A Hoe”:
Worth it just for the line “Look up in the sky, it’s a bird! It’s a plane! What’s dat fool name? CAPTAIN SAVE A HOE MAAAANE!”
Masta Ace – “Born To Roll”:
I still don’t know how Masta Ace was pulling west coast airplay back then, but I’m happy he was. I still find my self singing the chorus without even knowing it’s from this song.
Aaliyah – “Back and Forth”:
This song really deserved a spot on any 94-era mixtape.
Warren G and Nate Dogg – “Regulate”:
Don’t care what anyone says. This was THE song of 1994.
Rappin 4 Tay – “Players Club”:
A mid-90s Bay Area gem.
Soul 4 Real – “Candy Rain”:
This was the last track I added to that tape before it was time to move on. Not sure how I remember this being the very last, but I would like to know where I stashed that tape.
What does an iRobot engineer do for their Masters thesis? Build a robot, of course — and, in the case of this one particular unnamed engineer, a stair-climbing robot. Unfortunately, any other details are a bit hard to come by, but it looks like the folks at iRobot were impressed enough with the bot to throw a short video of it up on the company’s official YouTube channel. As you can see for yourself after the break, while it is a bit on the pokey side, it certainly seems to be more than capable of performing the task at hand with ease, and with some satisfactory buzzing and whirring sounds to boot.
Updated: 04/17: We have created interactive ZeeMap and we’d like you to report your experience with Netflix’ service, particularly Blu-ray discs. The map will help us find out if the cracked Blu-ray discs problem is likely to occur in certain areas more than other. Click here to add your experience to the map.
Red Alert! Netflix Blu-ray disc subscribers may want to inspect their red envelopes a little more closely before popping the discs into a player.
Hundreds of subscribers to the company’s movies-by-mail service say they have received fractured Blu-ray discs that won’t play — and that it’s happening at an alarming rate.
"Over the last two months, we’ve had probably four to six Blu-ray discs in a row arrive with small cracks at the edge of the disc that render it unplayable," says Pete Brown, whose wife has been a Netflix subscriber for three years.
Blu-ray discs differ from standard-definition discs in the way they are produced and how they store data. Standard definition DVDs are two clear polycarbonate discs, each 0.6mm thick, sandwiched together with the data recorded on a very thin metal substrate in between, explains Adrienne Downey, senior analyst at research firm Semico.
Blu-ray is a single 1.1mm polycarbonate disc that has the data encoded at the top. Blu-ray discs have a 0.1 mm coating on top of the data layer to protect it from getting scratched. Because the coating is much thinner than the 0.6mm sandwich used in DVDs, it could be more vulnerable to scratches and cracks.
"The coating is supposed to protect the discs but it could also be making them more brittle," says Downey. "Ultimately Blu-ray is a new technology and they are still working the kinks out of it." Downey says it will be another year or two before the whole Blu-ray ecosystem is entirely problem-free.
But Blu-ray technology can’t take all the blame for the Netflix customers’ problems. Far fewer BlockBuster customers are complaining about their Blu-ray discs, which suggests that Netflix has a few issues of its own handling the discs.
Renting Blu-ray movies from Netflix has been particularly challenging for Brown and his wife. Take the case of the Oscar-nominated hit Babel that was in Brown’s queue. The disc arrived cracked, and then the replacement disk that Netflix sent was damaged. But that’s not the end of the story: The replacement to the replacement was also damaged. "At a point, my wife was like, maybe they are sending us same thing to us over and over again," says Brown.
Reports about customer problems with damaged Blu-ray discs come even as Netflix plans to increase rental fees for Blu-ray discs by about 20 percent at the end of April. About 1 million, or 10 percent, of the company’s subscribers rent Blu-ray movies. The company currently ships 2 million red envelopes a day.
Netflix user complaints first flared up in late 2007 as early adopters complained in online forums of receiving damaged discs. Now a fresh wave of users say they’re having similar problems.
The problem is not pervasive, says Steve Swasey, Netflix’s vice-president of corporate communications. "Our percentage of Blu-ray disks that members receive that are not playable is a fraction of a percent," he says.
So what’s causing the cracked Blu-ray discs? The reasons could include tough love from the local post office, which sometimes sticks the envelopes into automated sorting machines. It could be the Blu-ray disc manufacturing process or even the relative newness of the technology.
"It could be in the specific (Netflix) hub that ships them or it could be in the postal carrier or it could be the ways these subscribers are handling it," says Swasey.
Older titles on Blu-ray discs certainly seem to be at greater risk for cracks, says Grant Brown (no relation to Pete Brown), a Netflix subscriber who has been following the issue for more than a year. "From what I have seen with my account and those of my friends, the newer the Blu-ray disc, the better the chance that it has not been cracked."
That’s not always the case, however. Tom Turley, a Netflix subscriber in Seattle, says he received two cracked Blu-ray discs in a row last week — both with a new movie.
Meanwhile, Netflix customer representatives have been pointing fingers at the post office. On Grant Brown’s blog, users say Netflix encourages them to complain to their USPS if they receive cracked discs.
"It almost looks like Netflix doen’t want to deal with the problem and they are pushing people to complain about the postal system," says Grant Brown.
Netflix says it takes user complaints seriously. Every DVD that is reported damaged is pulled out of circulation, says Swasey. And while some users suggest a more sturdy mailer for Blu-ray discs, the company is not in favor of it.
"When we see the breakage for Blu-ray to be so infinitesimally small of the total ships, it would be cost-prohibitive for us to change the shipping method," says Swasey. "We do everything to drive costs down."
A new report, entitled “The Single Female Tech Buyer: Cast Aside Myths And Embrace This Target Segment” may read like the latest Tom Clancy techno-thriller (okay, not really) but its message is crystal clear: “cast aside myths,” it says, “and embrace this target segment.” In its study of one thousand single men and one thousand single women residing in the United States and Canada, Forrester Research uncovered a slew of facts you can use to sell single women stuff that they probably don’t need. Behold: When asked about their next computer, the vast majority of women (forty-seven percent) said they were planning on buying a laptop, while most of the men (again, forty-seven percent) said they’d be buying a desktop. Clearly, laptop makers should be concentrating hot-to-trot models like the Vaio P (or, for the budget conscious, the Vaino), while desktop manufacturers should concentrate on superhero or vicious animal-themed desktop rigs. But that ain’t all! Ownership amongst bachelors and bachelorettes were darn near equal for things like gaming consoles, handheld games, and digital cameras. If you can’t wait to dip into what is sure to be a real page turner, make sure you hit the read link — the report can be yours for a mere $749.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
Unbeknown to you, you’ve just stumbled upon this week’s Ask Engadget. If you want to get in on this action, feel free to drop us an inquiry at ask at engadget dawt com. Before you get those gears turning, we’d invite you to chime in on Mitch’s question below:
In 1994, I painstakingly crafted the greatest hip-hop mixtape cassette I would ever make, comprised solely of songs on the radio at the time. I was 9.
