Just as spring training arrives, so do the year’s two Major League Baseball games. Though this season always reminds us of the gone-but-never-forgotten MVP franchise, we’re happy to report that both offerings do the sport justice.
If you’re getting rid of your Xbox, Wii, or PS3, make sure you delete your personal data first! pOriginally posted at a href=”http://www.cnettv.com/8301-13415_53-10464904-11.html” class=”origPostedBlog”CNET TV/a/p
Yeah, that’s right, we’re six years old this week. Thanks for noticing, jerks! Actually, we forgot too (it was Tuesday), and to make up for it we’re giving away a Motorola Droid, courtesy of Verizon Wireless! The phone was recently selected as the Gadget of the Year both by you, our illustrious readers, and by this rapidly-aging Engadget staff you hold so dear, so we didn’t think you’d mind. But that’s not all — the winner of the Droid and 10 lucky runner-ups will also receive one of our fancy new Engadget t-shirts! All you have to do is leave a comment to tell us how much you care (about us, not the environment) and you’ll be entered to win. The full instructions and typical rules can be found after the break. Good luck!
Continue reading Engadget’s 6th birthday giveaway: ‘Gadget of the Year’ edition
Engadget’s 6th birthday giveaway: ‘Gadget of the Year’ edition originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 05 Mar 2010 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Playing with apps on an Android phone is fun. Building your own apps, even more so. But what about using the phone to operate a moving, talking bot? Tim Heath and Ryan Hickman have done exactly that.
The bot they recently finished building — Truckbot — is still relatively simple. It’s got an HTC G1 phone for a brain, riding on top of a chassis with some wheels and treads. All it can do is roll around on a tabletop, turn and head off in a specified direction. When I visit the workshop where they’re building it, Heath and Hickman show how it can use the phone’s compass to make itself point to the south. But the duo have much more ambitious plans in mind.
“I knew I could build this thing. I just needed a phone,” explains Heath, a Python web engineer. He posted on various e-mail lists looking for one, including that of Hacker Dojo, a Mountain View, California, hackerspace. Hickman, who works for Google’s Doubleclick division, but has no connections to the Android people, saw Heath’s pleas.
They got together and started building. The first bot they built was made out of plastic. They just finished constructing their second bot, called Truckbot, which is lighter and cardboard-based.
They could have purchased the pricey $175 Oomlout kit, which includes wheels, motors and an Arduino-based brain. Hickman and Heath opted for making their own chassis. Here’s a full list of parts they used:
Total: $30 (plus shipping). To be fair, Heath and Hickman had access to a local workshop, the Tech Shop in Menlo Park, California, which helped tremendously in terms of having the tools to build some parts, like laser-cutting the cardboard chassis.
Their bot is more impressive for its potential than what it currently does. “Unlike most people out there,” says Hickman, as he types commands on the screen of his laptop, “we don’t want to use the phone as a remote control. Rather, it becomes the brain of the operation.”
This means they could utilize every hardware and software component of an Android phone, programming the bot to avoid obstacles, recognize faces and voices, pinpoint its location and go places. An Arduino board, which basically serves as a software-hardware link, is not smart enough to handle that, but an Android phone can.
For example, Arduino can detect when the bot bumps into something, but has to rely on the phone to decide on what to do next. As we’re wrapping up, the bot turns towards me and says, “Hello, Miran. Wired is awesome.”
Thanks, Truckbot! I like you too.
Wanna try building your own Android bot? Here is their five-step process:
To get it to work, you also need to do the following with the OS:
* For the commercial version of Android, an additional BlueTooth module is required.
If you get stuck, go to Heath and Hickman’s bot development blog for more tips. Enjoy experimenting, and let us know how it goes.
See Also:
Photos: Miran Pavic / Wired.com
iriver introduces D1000 ‘e-dictionary’ for Korea originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 05 Mar 2010 17:27:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Microsoft on Friday announced that an update to its Xbox code of conduct will now allow gamers to identify their race, nationality, religion, and sexual orientation in gamertags.
“Under our previous policy, some of these expressions of self-identification were not allowed in Gamertags or profiles to prevent the use of these terms as insults or slurs,” Marc Whitten, general manager of Xbox Live, wrote in a note on the Xbox Web site. “However we have since heard feedback from our customers that while the spirit of this approach was genuine, it inadvertently excluded a part of our Xbox Live community.”
The update also “comes hand-in-hand with increased stringency and enforcement to prevent the misuse of these terms,” Whitten said.
The code of conduct is available online. It says that users can identify themselves as lesbian, gay, bi, transgender, or straight, but “other terms regarding relationship orientation are not allowed.”
“As [Xbox Live] evolves and our customers provide us with feedback, these rules evolve to incorporate new features or changes in how people wish to interact,” Whitten wrote.
The blog BlackBerry Leaks has posted clear photos of a handset with a portrait-style slide-down keyboard.
Continue reading Spring Design’s Alex e-reader hits the FCC
Spring Design’s Alex e-reader hits the FCC originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 05 Mar 2010 16:53:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Apple on Friday announced the official release date of its iPad — April 3 — but the company also raised more questions. Specifically, Apple’s press statement suggests the iPad won’t ship with all the apps that came with the iPhone. What will happen to them?
Apple’s press release states the iPad includes “12 new innovative apps designed especially for the iPad.” That number presumably refers to the brand new Videos app and the redesigned iPod, Maps, Photos, Mail, Safari, App Store, iTunes, YouTube, Contacts, Calendar and Notes apps that were present on demo units of the iPad in January. (For a clearer look at the iPad’s Home screen, see Apple’s press image below.)
But if you recall, the iPhone ships with some apps that appear to be left out from the iPad: Stocks, Calculator, Clock, Weather and Voice Memos. What gives?
Apple didn’t respond to a request for comment, but I’m willing to guess Apple will just stick those apps in the App Store for a free download, and they’ll be the same apps as they were on the iPhone. After all, it’s unlikely there’s much to do with those particular apps to make them visually special for the iPad.
There have been some other theories tossed around recently as well. Blogger Kevin Fox speculates that Apple might reintroduce the missing apps as widgets through Dashboard. If you’re a Mac user, you should be familiar with Dashboard widgets. They constantly run in the background and can be accessed by pressing a quick hot key (F12). Fox points out that the missing apps were all originally Dashboard widgets, with the exception of Voice Memos, and perhaps an iPad version of Dashboard will function as a more sophisticated method of multitasking for the iPad. (Contrary to popular belief, the iPhone can multitask, but it’s limited to running a select few apps made by Apple in the background, such as the iPod player and the phone.)
In any case, until April, the missing apps are a head scratcher. We’ll find out soon enough.
Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com
Image courtesy of Apple
Crave UK has heard back from HTC in the mystery of a Nexus One cracked screen. “Putting a phone in a tight pair of jeans and sitting down” would usually cause the kind of damage seen by our British compatriots, the company said.
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