September 1 has become a circled date on every Mac nerd’s calendar following Apple’s announcement of a music-related media event to be held in San Francisco. One of the big announcements, according to analysts, could be an overhauled iPod Nano, sans click wheel. pOriginally posted at a href=”http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-20014813-263.html” class=”origPostedBlog”MacFixIt/a/p
The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals just decided that it was legal for the police to put a GPS tracking device on your car, sitting in your driveway, on your property. Here’s how to protect yourself. More »
Welcome to Engadget’s Back to School guide! We know that this time of year can be pretty annoying and stressful for everyone, so we’re here to help out with the heartbreaking process of gadget buying for the school-aged crowd. On the menu today are a handful of fun yet practical gadgets, but feel free to check out our Back to School hub for more recommendations in other categories.
Continue reading Engadget’s back to school guide: Fun stuff!
Engadget’s back to school guide: Fun stuff! originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 26 Aug 2010 14:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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The rich landscape of Android versioning just got a bit richer, with word of an official Froyo update for the Droid Incredible being launched tomorrow (based on the screencap pictured above), while the EVO 4G’s recent Froyo software just got rooted. If you’re crazily impatient, an Android 2.2 ROM for the Incredible just leaked out into the wild, and can be installed with a bit of work, but from the official-looking-ness of this leak from Droid Life, a painless official update is not far off. Meanwhile, in Sprint land, the xda-devs have a rather complicated, rather scary method posted for rooting 2.2 on the EVO 4G — you’ll have to ask yourself how much that freedom is worth to you, or just wait for the inevitably easier methods to come along and hold your hand.
The revolving door: Froyo for Droid Incredible coming tomorrow, Froyo for EVO 4G gets rooted originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 26 Aug 2010 14:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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A piece of plastic goes in, a piece of metal comes out. At least, that’s what vapor metallizing seems to accomplish, at least to our immediate senses. It’s gilding, except it’s been updated for the electronics age. And it’s everywhere. More »
How can you make tiny, flexible materials that conduct electricity more efficiently than today’s batteries? You can engineer expensive, high-density carbon nanotubes. Or you can use the original nanobots, made by nature itself: viruses.
An MIT group recently described an advance that brings us closer to the day when freaky, half-alive nanomachines assemble batteries you could wear.
The research comes out of Angela Belcher’s Biomolecular Materials Group at MIT, which has been working on this project since 1994. They use bacteriophages to build — really, evolve — hyperdense materials from ionic particles, the same way bone, shells, chalk, and glass were made in the Cambrian period.
This week Mark Allen, a postdoc in the group, outlined the use of a new cathode made with iron flouride. Allen also described some of the potential applications of this technology. The high flexibility of the nanostructured material means you can weave it into any fabric or pour it into any shape, including:
In 2008, the group published an article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences outlining how this would work. Viruses create a template, assembling nanowires out of cobalt oxide. These are built on top of a synthetic electrolytic polymer, called a polyelectrolyte. (Natural polyelectrolytes include protein polypeptides and DNA.) Stamp this electrode onto a platinum current collector, and:
The resulting electrode arrays exhibit full electrochemical functionality. This versatile approach for fabricating and positioning electrodes may provide greater flexibility for implementing advanced battery designs such as those with interdigitated microelectrodes or 3D architectures.
A UAV is going to provide the first real-world test of the scaled-up batteries in action. Other applications we’ve seen touted for wearable electronics include wearable solar cells and electronic devices that stand up to repeat laundering. So much to look forward to.
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In what’s a sure sign that the megapixel race in cameras is out of control, Canon has announced that it has developed a 120-megapixel image sensor.
That’s 13,280 x 9,184 pixels packed into a rectangle about 29 millimeters x 20 millimeters–or 1.4 inches x 0.7 inches . It’s the highest level of resolution in a sensor of its size, says Canon.
Most cameras today used either a CCD (charge-coupled device) sensor or a CMOS (complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor) sensor. Canon’s latest innovation is for a CMOS sensor.
The 120-megapixel sensor is about 7.5 times larger and offers a 2.4-fold improvement in resolution over Canon’s highest comparable commercial sensor. Canon’s highest-resolution commercial CMOS sensor is currently the EOS-1Ds Mark III and EOS 5D Mark II digital SLR cameras. That sensor incorporates approximately 21.1 million pixels.
Cramming more pixels into a sensor is not necessarily indicative of the quality of the photos. Many consumers think more megapixels in a camera means better photos. But sometimes packing more light-sensitive pixels on a tiny sensor can result in greater noise in the photos. Cameras also require strong processing capabilities to take all the data from the sensors and translate into a beautiful picture.
With most CMOS sensors, camera makers use parallel processing to read data at high pixel counts. But that has to be balanced against problems such as signal delays and deviations in timing, all of which can affect image quality.
Canon has modified the method to control the readout circuit timing to get about 9.5 frames per second. This can support continuous shooting of ultra-high-resolution images, says Canon.
The newly developed CMOS sensor also includes full HD video (1,920 x 1,080 pixels) output capability.
For now, the 120-megapixel sensor is a proof-of-concept. It’s an engineering flight of fancy but it shows camera makers are trying to find ways to pack in greater capability into increasingly smaller sensors.
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Photo: CMOS sensor/Canon
While Toshiba has already showcased a 3D HDTV that can be viewed with the naked eye, FuZhou Rockchip Electronics has done the same with a prototype tablet.
Last time we heard of Sony Ericsson’s Xperia X8 it was crawling around the FCC, but last night we found the little thing in a more welcoming, though equally as judgmental place — our hands. Formerly codenamed the “Shakira,” we were hoping the Android phone would be a bit more modern and slim, but sadly that’s just not the reality of the rather chunky smartphone. Just like its X10 Mini and Mini Pro siblings, the 3-inch handset runs Android 1.6 with Sony’s rather-deep custom skin — a Sony rep on hand told us there would be an upgrade to 2.1 sometime in Q4. That seems a bit late, but there’s no doubt that the X8 is a lower-end phone with its 3.2 megapixel cam and 600MHz CPU. The X8 we saw was wearing a white cover, though were also told there would be other interchangeable cover options available when it hits the market soon. Other than that we found the prototype (it was clearly marked that!) to be rather responsive and the UI to be quite intuitive, however the onscreen keyboard was extremely cramped for typing a URL into the browser. In comparison to the hoards of powerful Android smartphones we’ve seen in the last month or so, the X8 is certainly lackluster, but the little thing may just be an affordable unlocked choice when it hits the US for less than $300 soon.
Gallery: Sony Ericsson Xperia X8
Sony Ericsson Xperia X8 to hit US for less than $300 unlocked, we go hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 26 Aug 2010 13:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Teiyu Goto discusses how he came up with the design of both the original PlayStation, which was released 15 years ago, and its controller. pOriginally posted at a href=”http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-20014786-17.html” class=”origPostedBlog”The Digital Home/a/p
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