Hasta La Gadget!

Ready for your daily dose of wildly speculative extrapolation and unfounded fear-mongering? Predictive texting is the latest suspect in the ongoing war against things that make children dumb. A new study from Australia’s Monash University has shown that predictive texters finish their exams faster and with more errors than others, because of course, when your mobile finishes your words in a text, you expect it to finish your sentences in a test. We jest, and there may be a sliver of truth to this contention, but let’s be forthright here — you could probably do more damage to your brain with a good night’s alcohol intake than you can with a lifetime of texting.

[Via Switched]

Filed under: Cellphones

Texting makes kids dumb — science fact! originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 13 Aug 2009 02:03:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Cameras with projectors? That’s old tricks by now. Samsung wants you to know the new, hip differentiator in the point and shoot market is two LCDs — one in the back like usual, and a 1.5-inch LCD in the front, right next to the lens. According to CNET Asia, that latter display’s good for making sure your self-portraits are just right, or alternatively, it can play “cute animations to capture kids’ attention.” We also think it might also be useful for capturing the exact moment of horror from a coulrophobist. Both 12.2 megapixel cameras sport a 4.6x optical zoom, image stabilization, 720p video capabilities, and a touchscreen rear LCD with haptic feedback. The ST500 has a 3-inch display in the back, while the ST550 (pictured) features a 3.5-inch display that’s also much, much sharper. Nothing said on price, but word from a press release pinpoints a worldwide release date by the end of this month.

Read – Samsung unveils cameras with two screens
Read – ST550 preview

Filed under: Digital Cameras

Samsung’s ST500 and ST550 cameras add a LCD in front to help with your self-portraits originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 12 Aug 2009 23:22:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sure, it’s not as sleek as some of the other options out there, but the specs of this HP Pavilion Elite e9110t desktop, for the $649.99 asking price, are pretty stunning: a 2.33GHz Intel Core 2 Quad processor, NVIDIA GeForce G210, 6GB of RAM, a 500GB hard drive , 802.11n, Blu-ray player, and a free Windows 7 upgrade when it finally launches. Offer ends this Saturday, August 15th, but if you’re interests have piqued and your wallet has giving the go-ahead, dealnews has all the details and pertinent coupon codes.

[Via CNET]

Filed under: Desktops

HP Pavilion Elite makes an offer you (probably) can’t refuse: Blu-ray, Win 7, quad-core CPU for $650 originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 12 Aug 2009 20:56:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Ross Rubin (@rossrubin) contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology.

One of the challenges for companies trying to build across the “three screens” of the television, PC and cell phone is adapting their distinctive technologies to those platforms. Apple showed strong early momentum on the Mac with its widget architecture, but is falling behind some rivals in bringing glanceable utility to other platforms.

Introduced with Mac OS X Tiger, Dashboard widgets (or “gadgets” as Google and Microsoft call them) are small, simple applets intended to convey quick bits of information or provide a quick change of settings. Veteran Mac users recognized them as the reincarnation of desk accessories, which provided functions such as an alarm clock and note pad when the Mac could run only one program at a time. Apple aggregates thousands of widgets on a special web page, and Leopard brought a new feature called Web Clips to provide an easy way for consumers to create their own widgets from part of a Web page in addition to the more traditional Dashcode development tool.

Dashboard earned its own button on the Mac keyboard. It drew some criticism due to its modal nature, but its ability to quickly display or hide a screenful of widgets without having to mess with window arrangements made it more convenient than the gadget implementation in Windows Vista and even Windows 7, which has freed gadgets from the Sidebar and now displays them on the desktop — a throwback to the Active Desktop feature of Windows 95.

Continue reading Switched On: Apple wanes in the widget wars

Filed under: Software

Switched On: Apple wanes in the widget wars originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 12 Aug 2009 20:09:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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(Credit: Dong Ngo/CNET)

It’s probably time you said goodbye to your PowerPC-based Mac.

Adobe confirmed Tuesday that future versions of its Creative Suite will run only on Intel-based Mac computers. There will be no support offered for PowerPC based systems.

The company’s decision follows Apple’s announcement …