Hasta La Gadget!

Just how good is the iPad’s pixel upscaling, the trick that makes it possible to run iPhone apps full-screen on the new magical wonder-pad? Not very, it seems.

IPhone (and now iPad) developer Kevin Ng took his game, WordCrasher, and fired it up in the new iPad software development kit (SDK). Using the iPad simulator, he hit the 2x button (actually more like 4x, as the pixels are doubled in two directions) and, well, pixelarity ensued, with jaggies spoiling the clean lines of his pastel-colored letter-tiles (WordCrasher is a kind of stressful, Tetris-inspired Scrabble game).

Next, Ng reworked the graphics for the full-screen of the iPad, and the results look lovely. Of course, the full effect can’t really be seen on your computer, as the screen resolution of the iPad is higher. What you can see, though, is the result of “bump maps and other shader techniques” which are available thanks to OpenGL ES 2.0. You’ll need to click through to Ng’s site to see the full-sized images.

One comment from Ng caught our eye: “Apple is keen for us developers to create strong real world metaphors by simulating real world materials, objects and their behaviors.” You know what Steve Jobs said about having “the internet in your hand”? It seems that Apple is pretty serious about that, rather than it being just a throw-away line. In fact, Andy Ihnatko* of the Chicago Sun Times said on MacBreak Weekly this week that the screen is so fast and responsive it feels like you are moving physical objects around the screen.

All this bodes well for the “Giant iPhone”. And remember, thanks to the lack of multitasking and the closed App Store, your iPad will still run this quick after a year, something we can’t say about our Macs and PCs.

What does a game running natively on the iPad look like? [Kevin Ng Games]

*Ihnatko’s name is actually built-in to the OS X spell-check. Pretty awesome.

At first glance, Urbanears Plattan headphones appear to me just another me-too copy of Panasonic’s super-successful RP-HTX7 retro-cans. They have the requisite big, padded ear-cups, thick headband and garish colors, and even come in at a similar $60.

Look closer, though, and you see some extras that put them way ahead. The stylish headphones have a microphone and inline remote that will control or at least let you talk to most phones, including the iPhone. They also have something I’ve never seen before: a headphone jack socket high up on one earpiece, so you can let a friend jack-in and share your tunes, or listen as you watch a movie together. They also fold flat (ish) so, unlike the Panasonics, they’re actually good to travel with.

The only thing we can’t tell without a test is how they sound, but the numbers are promising. The 40mm driver has a frequency response of 20Hz-20KHz and a sensitivity of 112dB. On sale now.

Plattan [Urbanears. Thanks, Valerie!]

We’re generally reluctant to cover purely promotional stunts like these, but when you decide to jack up a house-sized arrow on a crane and hang it next to London’s Thames river, well, exceptions can be made. Nokia’s big push to inform the world that Ovi Maps is free — now and forever — has culminated in the above sign, whose most appealing feature must be that it allows commoners like you and us to control it. People can send in a missive and coordinates via text or email, and then watch as the giant pointer rotates to the given direction and displays their wisdom to the world. See it in action after the break.

Continue reading Nokia mounts huge Ovi Maps signpost on a crane in London (video)

Nokia mounts huge Ovi Maps signpost on a crane in London (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 04 Feb 2010 06:07:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  YouTube  | Email this | Comments

The 32nm dual-core Clarkdale processors that recently made their debut are about to pave the way for Intel’s next performance crown chaser, the six-core Gulftown. You might’ve known that already, but Intel’s decided to furnish us with the above slide detailing the particular differences between the two dies, with the most notable being the whopping 1.17 billion transistors that the new CPU will be composed of. The major attraction of Clarkdale chips lies in their power efficiency and competent integrated GPU, but the Gulftown focus will be firmly on the high end. Hence, there’s no integrated graphics, but the built-in memory controller supports three channels of DDR3 RAM and even plays nice with lower-powered 1.35-volt sticks. There’s also confirmation that the forthcoming hex-core chip will fit inside the familiar LGA-1366 socket, so if you bought a high end Core i7, worry not, you’ll be able to replace your still blisteringly quick CPU with an even faster beast. Quad-core variants — by virtue of disabling a pair of cores — are on the cards as well, while Intel also took the opportunity to delve into questions of 1Tbps+ bandwidth interconnects and its 80-core processor project, but you’ll have to hit up the links below to learn more about those.

Intel teases six-core Gulftown, discusses tera-scale computing originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 04 Feb 2010 05:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  AnandTech  | Email this | Comments

This article was written on November 06, 2006 by CyberNet.

Aging is just a part of life and there is no way around it. Instead of having to age by your lonesome self you can setup your Firefox tabs to age, too! There is a new extension available called Aging Tabs and it does just that.

Just install the extension and your tabs will start aging away. There are several different options, as you can see above, that let you customize how the tabs look. In the screenshot you can also see the aged tab that I created by switching back and forth several times between the two right tabs, thus leaving that one neglected and left to grow old. However, the tab can regain its youth if you start selecting it again.

At first I kinda thought this was a “fun for awhile” extension where it would get old (no pun intended) quickly. I have been using it all morning and it surprisingly helps to filter out tabs that I shouldn’t have open anymore. If you constantly just have one or two tabs open then you probably won’t see the benefit in this, but I am constantly reading news and I’ll have around 25 tabs at the same time.

You’ll also notice the default blue color on the currently selected tab. It makes the current tab stick out so much more that I now think Mozilla should have done a similar color for the currently selected tab.

I would probably place this extension in my top 5 favorites.

Download Aging Tabs Firefox Extension

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

Related Posts:

Tab Mix Plus Released For Firefox 2Firefox 2.0 Gets Undo Close Tab & Scrolling TabsFree Firefox Memory with TooManyTabs ExtensionHelpful Tip: Restore Firefox Tabs & WindowsMust Have: Undo Close Tab Extension For Firefox