Oct 02

Screen Grabs: Dell’s Latitude Z keeps ‘Parks & Recreation’ intern busy

Posted in: Features, laptop, Today's Chili, ultraportable
Screen Grabs chronicles the uses (and misuses) of real-world gadgets in today’s movies and TV. Send in your sightings (with screen grab!) to screengrabs at engadget dt com.

Man, Dell‘s making a serious push to get its wares out to the masses this fall. Just days after we spotted an Adamo chillin’ in House M.D., a shiny new Latitude Z has now been spotted in NBC’s own Parks & Recreation. Granted, we can’t actually see that any work is being done (the default blue wallpaper isn’t exactly telling), but when you’ve got Amy Meredith Poehler running the grandiose city town of Pawnee, Indiana, you can only expect so much. But hey, look on the bright side — we’re pretty sure the proceeds from eBaying that Latitude Z would more than cover the flora she purchased while under the influence, wouldn’t you agree?

[Thanks, Andrew]

Gallery: Screen Grabs: Dell’s Latitude Z keeps ”Parks & Recreation’ intern busy

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Screen Grabs: Dell’s Latitude Z keeps ‘Parks & Recreation’ intern busy originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 02 Oct 2009 07:56:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Oct 02

Cowon teases iAudio 9 portable media player, waits for a reaction

Posted in: PMP, teaser, Today's Chili

It seems that the above pictured splash page has since been removed from Cowon‘s website, but given the outfit’s long, long history of teasing products before they’re actually introduced, we’ll give ’em the benefit of the doubt here. Reportedly, the decidedly ho hum looking media player will ship with a 2-inch LCD, built-in FM tuner, a microphone, TV output, internal speaker and support for plenty of formats. As of now, storage capacities and pricing remains a mystery, but we’re certain Cowon will be clearing that up in short order. Ahem.

[Via AnythingButiPod]

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Cowon teases iAudio 9 portable media player, waits for a reaction originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 02 Oct 2009 07:27:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Oct 02

Spotify Adds Offline Listening to Desktop

Posted in: Media Players, Today's Chili

spotify-premium

Spotify, our favorite online music-streaming jukebox, has just added offline music to its desktop version, bringing it into line with the excellent but flawed iPhone version.

Spotify is a piece of software that lets you play pretty much any music you like. It already keeps a “secret” cache on your computer and uses that to serve music to other users. Think legal BitTorrent for music, but with an instant-on that makes iTunes look even more sluggish than usual.

The iPhone version will let premium users (people who pay €10 or £10 per month for the ad-free service) store up to 3,333 tracks on their devices for offline listening. The latest desktop iteration of Spotify has just gone offline, too, with the same track limit. This is wonderful news, and means that Spotify could replace iTunes for all but applications and podcasts for most people.

It makes a great deal of sense on the back-end, too. If you already store gigabytes of cached music to make things more responsive, why not make those gigabytes available to the user? And of course you still have access to the gazillions of tracks in the catalog when you are online.

The service is still unavailable to US users, who must be getting more and more jealous as the cool features pile on. Pretty much as jealous as I am of you guys having Google Voice already. Make sure to check out the in depth coverage of the Spotify phenomenon by the handsome Eliot Van Buskirk over on our sister blog, Epicenter.

Spotify goes offline [Spotify]
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Oct 02

Nokia X6 gets set up for FCC testing, torn down for kicks

Posted in: capacitive, nokia, smartphone, Today's Chili
Nokia X6 gets set up for FCC testing, torn down for kicks

You’ve seen what the Nokia X6 looks like in glamorous press shots and some impromptu hands-on snaps to boot. Now it’s time for the FCC to have its way with the thing, bringing its special flavor of “celebrity caught at 7:00am without her makeup on” style of photography. The 32GB smartphone sports a 3.2-inch capacitive touchscreen and is slated to ship sometime before the end of the year for 459 Euros ($650). With FCC certification out of the way, Nokia should have no problem getting this into American pockets before we run out of months.

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Nokia X6 gets set up for FCC testing, torn down for kicks originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 02 Oct 2009 07:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Oct 02

LG W2486L approaches great

Posted in: Today's Chili

I reviewed the Samsung SyncMaster XL2370 a few weeks back. (BTW, that monitor is slated to be released at Best Buy on October 12, if you’re interested.) Since then, it seems the floodgates have been blown wide open when it comes to LED-backlit monitors.

Thursday, we posted a review of the LG W2486L, …

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Oct 02

Crave giveaway of the week: Ecogear laptop bags

Posted in: Today's Chili

For this week’s installment of the weekly Crave giveaway, we’re going green with not just one, but three Ecogear bags made with “planet-friendly organic cotton, PVC-free materials, recycled plastics, and toxic-free dyes and components.” That’s great, but we also like the design of the bags, which are …

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Oct 02

Hands-on look: Dexim P-Flip iPhone power dock

Posted in: Today's Chili

The P-Flip folding power dock doubles as a desktop stand.

(Credit: Dexim)

The Dexim P-Flip is two, two, two products in one. It’s a long-lasting external battery for your iPhone and a desktop stand that keeps it propped up nicely.

This folding, three-position dock bears more than a passing …

Originally posted at iPhone Atlas

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Oct 02

Overhead Bike Surf Racks Carry Boards, Block Sun

Posted in: Today's Chili, Transportation

surfracks

Something seems very wrong about driving to the beach to go surfing. You’re all set to enjoy a free ride from Mother Nature and marvel at the power of the sea, and yet you get to the coast by burning her very lifeblood and spewing toxic waste into her lungs.

No, much better to go by bike. I see plenty of surfers here in Barcelona heading to the sea with their boards on side mounted racks. Apart from the fact that the Mediterranean has practically no surf, these racks work fine.

But an alternative from ACG SurfRacks puts the board overhead on tall stands. Why is this better? Because it makes you narrower (and therefore less of a nuisance on the boardwalk), taller (added visibility) and our favorite, the board itself acts as a sun-shade, kind of like the canopy on those dorky BMW cocoon-like C1 scooters. Add to this the fact that a side wind is less likely to blow you out into traffic and you have a solid set of specs.

The racks bolt on to your bike and offer two padded T-bars, front and back, to which you can secure the board. As the chaps behind the racks are surfers, they’ve spent more time out on the waves than working on their website, so we have no prices for you. There is, though a list of surf shops which stock them. Predictably, the majority are in California.

Product page [ACG via Bike Hacks]


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Oct 02

XP Mode is ready, will be a free download on October 22

Posted in: Microsoft, Today's Chili, Windows, windows 7, Windows XP, Windows7

Microsoft Download Center, October 22 — add that to your already-busy Windows 7 release party itinerary. That’ll be the quickest and most painless way to enrich your hot new OS with the now finalized code for XP Mode, a virtualized Windows XP environment for those who just can’t let go of their legacy software. The solitary hitch is that you’ll need to have purchased a copy of Windows 7 Professional or higher to get in on the fun, but you already knew that, right? Oh, and you might also want to check that your hardware manufacturer hasn’t disabled virtualization as part of some overzealous security / party-pooping measure.

[Via Ars Technica; Thanks, Eugen]

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XP Mode is ready, will be a free download on October 22 originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 02 Oct 2009 06:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Oct 02

Pro-Camera Adds Image Stabilization to iPhone

Posted in: iPhone, Software, Today's Chili

procamera

Since the v3.0 operating system allowed applications to access the iPhone’s hardware, iPhone photo applications have switched from being after-the-fact processors to full-on camera suites, letting you do everything from capturing images to post processing to (in some cases) uploading to FaceBook and the Twitter.

The latest is the rather appropriately professional-looking Pro-Camera, which can be yours for $3. Pro-Camera offers the self-timer and digital zoom found in other applications, but it brings some rather nice new features, usually found in proper, standalone cameras.

Most successful will probably be the anti-shake, which uses the accelerometer to detect your jitters and stabilize the image. Using a similar method, you can also overlay a horizon line to keep the pictures straight, or display a grid overlay.

Some other “features” are hardly more than padding: if you have Griffin’s Clarifi, you can take close up shots (the Clarifi is an add-on lens for the older 3G which allows macro shots in any application), for example.

We are interested, though, in the “Night Images” mode, which promises to clean up low-light shots. Our guess is that this relies heavily on image processing using information form the accelerometer, or just some fancy noise-reduction algorithms.

These kinds of camera apps are exciting in a different way, too. Effectively, it has turned the iPhone into a camera development kit. How else could you buy a single camera and then be able to easily switch between various control methods and feature-sets depending on subject matter or just personal preference? We’re looking forward to a lot more of these, especially when people start making special hardware to complement them.

Product page [Pro Camera]
Product page [iTunes]

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