May 03

Apple sells 1,000,000 iPads in revolution’s first month

Posted in: Apple, apple ipad, AppleIpad, breaking news, BreakingNews, ebooks, ipad, sales, stats, Today's Chili

Steve told us it’d be revolutionary, and if sales are the measure of a device’s success, then the iPad seems to be well on track to validating its creator’s bold claims. This past Friday, “just 28 days after its introduction,” Apple sold its millionth iPad. 1.5 million ebooks have already been downloaded to the device, along with 12 million apps. Steve Jobs has also taken time from his busy essay-writing schedule to remind us that that’s less than half of the 74 days it took to achieve the milestone with the original iPhone, and demand for the “magical” slate continues to outstrip supply. Full PR after the break.

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Apple sells 1,000,000 iPads in revolution’s first month originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 03 May 2010 08:39:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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May 03

3D printer creates ice sculptures — just add water

Posted in: canada, diy, printer, research, science, Today's Chili, university

Paper-mache, candy, and human cells have all been seen flowing through 3D printers for custom fabrication work, but students and faculty at Canada’s McGill University have a cheaper prototyping material: plain ol’ H2O. They recently modified this Fab@Home Model 1 by replacing the soft goo extruders with a temperature-controlled water delivery system, and set about making decorative ice sculptures and a large beer mug for good measure. While the academic project is officially supposed to explore “economic alternatives to intricate 3D models of architectural objects,” we’re not sure architects will want much to do with prototypes that drip… but tourism might well get a boost from liquor sold in frosty custom containers. We’re thirsty just looking at them.

3D printer creates ice sculptures — just add water originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 03 May 2010 08:32:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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May 03

Get a Sony Reader Pocket Edition for $139.95

Posted in: Today's Chili

Perfect last-minute gift for Mother’s Day–or ordered-well-in-advance gift for dads and grads. It’s new, not a refurbished, and it’s normally $200. pOriginally posted at a href=”http://news.cnet.com/8301-13845_3-20003956-58.html” class=”origPostedBlog”The Cheapskate/a/p

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May 03

New Smartphone Memory Boosts Battery Life

Posted in: memory, samsung, Today's Chili

Samsung_Blue_Earth.jpg

Samsung has announced a new kind of memory module, built from phase change material, that’s three times faster than existing flash memory and could boost battery life by up to 20 percent, BBC News reports.
Phase change material for memory is an idea that dates back over four decades, but it’s only now becoming a possibility for today’s mobile devices. In essence, the material can record or erase data when heated, and tends to use far less power than existing equivalents.
The material can be constructed in a variety of ways, but the most common is a glass-like alloy of germanium, antimony, and titanium. Heating the material turns it into two separate forms with very different electrical resistances, meaning it can represent binary 0s and 1s, the report said.
The company plans to begin producing 40-nanometer, 512 megabit (Mbit) phase change memory (PCM) chips en masse toward the end of 2010, and will build them in the same format as existing designs. This way, vendors needing a little extra battery life can drop them right into existing production runs.
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May 03

Avatar Director, NASA Building 3-D Mars Rover Camera

Posted in: NASA, science, space, Space Tech, Today's Chili
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James Cameron, the Oscar-winning director of Avatar and Titantic, has linked up with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory to build a high resolution 3-D camera for Curiosity, the next-generation Mars rover, Discovery News reports.
Malin Space Science Systems, the company behind the fixed-focal-length lens cameras for the rover, will build the actual 3-D mast camera as well, with Cameron listed as “co-investigator,” the report said.
Back in 1999, Cameron produced a TV mini-series and an IMAX film depicting the first humans to live on Mars. No word yet on what kind of glasses we’re all going to need to see the 3-D images coming down from the rover for the first time.
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May 03

Scientists Create Clouds With Laser

Posted in: science, Space Tech, Today's Chili

Laser_Cloud_NewScientist.jpg

Researchers in a German lab figured out how to generate small clouds on demand using a laser, pointing the way (at least in theory) for humans to control when it rains, New Scientist reports.
The new method builds on the old idea of cloud seeding, which consisted of sprinkling silver iodide crystals into clouds high in the atmosphere, the report said.
The new laser-based method involves firing very short pulses of infrared laser light–220-millijoules into just 60 femtoseconds each, equivalent to 1000 power plants–into a water-saturated air chamber at -24 degrees Celsius, creating linear clouds in the laser’s wake, according to the report.
Lest you think this occurred entirely in a lab environment, the scientists repeated the experiment in the skies over Berlin; while the results were invisible to humans, weather LIDAR picked up a huge increase in the density and size of water droplets.
The next step is to figure out how to replicate the experiment in a way that creates larger droplets that could fall as rain. (Image credit: Jean-Pierre Wolf/University of Geneva)
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May 03

Monitor money matters on Android with Mint

Posted in: Today's Chili

An Android app from personal finance service Mint.com joins its iPhone counterpart, though neither lives up to the full-fledged site. pOriginally posted at a href=”http://www.cnet.com/8301-19736_1-20003889-251.html” class=”origPostedBlog”Android Atlas/a/p

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May 03

Pure’s stylish internet radio lineup ships to America on July 1st

Posted in: radio, ship, shipping, ships, Today's Chili, us, usa

Pure has long since been a stranger to the US market, despite shipping some of the sexiest internet radios this planet has ever seen. The company announced back at CES that all of that would be changing in the near future, but it wasn’t until now that we had specifics surrounding the whos, whats, wheres and whens. The Evoke Flow, Oasis Flow and Seista Flow will all be available for purchase in the United States of America on the first of July, with MSRPs set for $229, $249 and $139 in order of mention. Initially, they’ll be available only through Pure’s website, though we get the impression that brick-and-mortar distribution is only a moment or two away. Check the full press release after the break, and be sure to jot down this here date in your handy dandy date book, cool?

Continue reading Pure’s stylish internet radio lineup ships to America on July 1st

Pure’s stylish internet radio lineup ships to America on July 1st originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 03 May 2010 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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May 03

Nokia launches Ovi App Wizard, will probably lead to Ovi-population problems

Posted in: hands-on, nokia, Today's Chili

Nokia’s Ovi Store may still be seriously losing in the app war to Apple and Google, but something tells us Espoo’s betting on its new Ovi App Wizard to help it gain some ground. Putting mobile software creation in the hands of the code-illiterate, the auto-generated application wizard lets anyone — and we mean anyone — turn any RSS or Atom feed out there into an app, and publish it to the Ovi Store. Surprisingly, it really is that simple. While we could have made a personal app with our Twitter and Facebook feed, we went ahead and finally made an Ovi Engadget app by simply going to oviappwizard.com and going through the four step process — we put in all three RSS feeds, uploaded our logos, tweaked the colors and hit publish. According to Nokia it should only take 24 hours for the app to be approved — yes, there’s some sort of approval process — but we’re still waiting for our app to show up in the storefront so we can download it on our N97. There’s the ability to serve up third party ads, but you’ll have to prove that you own the content you’ve placed in your app. Again, super simple, but we’re a bit wary of the sorts of apps that will start to pop up, and not sure we need everyone’s own personal feeds/sites overtaking the store. But we’ll let you be the judge of that — go on, hit the read link, create an app, and Ovi-populate.

Gallery: Ovi App Wizard hands-on

Nokia launches Ovi App Wizard, will probably lead to Ovi-population problems originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 03 May 2010 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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May 03

Nintendo Wii Gets Black Color, MotionPlus Bundle

Posted in: nintendo, nintendo wii, Today's Chili, video games, wii
Nintendo_Wii_Black.jpg
This certainly took long enough, but Nintendo fans in the U.S. are finally getting a black color option for the Wii.
Not only that, but Nintendo is boosting the stock bundle for both the black and white varieties. In addition to the motion-sensing Wii Remote controller, Nunchuk controller, and Wii Sports game that came before, all Wiis will now come with Wii Sports Resort and the Wii MotionPlus accessory.
The retail price for both colors will remain at $199.99. No word on pricing outside the U.S. yet.
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