Thanksgiving is almost here, and only one thing can save you from your lack of preparation, cooking abilities, and holiday etiquette: apps. Lots of apps. More »
The Bolle BP-10 has a dock at the top for mounting your iPhone, and there’s an app to let you select which photos you want to output.
It’s almost time to eat turkey and then jet out to Best Buy to be trampled by mad shoppers. Oh yes, the holiday season is just about here, which according to a few posts we’ve written in the last year means that the Chrome OS netbooks should be as well. Well, it turns out that the Google OS-powered laptops aren’t going to arrive this year, or at least not in the way we thought they would. That doesn’t mean Chrome OS isn’t going to see a bit of an unveil this year, but major manufacturers, including Acer and HP, won’t have its own Chromebooks ready before 2011. How do we know? Acer’s Jim Wong told us during the company’s global press conference that Acer will be launching its netbook based on the browser operating system during the “consumer launch” of the OS next year, while Google has its own agenda and will be doing something “in December.” We didn’t get to ask if that Acer netbook is in fact the “ZGA” netbook we’ve seen popping up in bug reports, but our guess is that it will be something quite similar.
So, what does Google have brewing? You remember the Google-branded Chrome OS netbook that we heard about? Well, according to a few of our very own sources, that’s exactly what’s going to happen. We don’t have exact timing details, but we have been told by a few that Google will launch its own Chrome-book a la the Nexus One for “friends and family.” As the operating system is still in a beta or preview form, the netbook would be aimed at the development / early adopter community. Specs-wise we don’t know all that much, but we’ve heard that it will be powered by an Intel Atom Pine Trail processor and, just as Digitimes reported, that 75,000 units are being manufactured by Taiwan ODM Inventec. We should mention that the aforementioned Acer “ZGA” was said to be used internally as a “dogfood device” at Google, but we believe this Google-branded device to be entirely different. Inventec, Intel, and Google wouldn’t comment on the hardware rumor, but Google did tell us that it would “have more details to share later this year.” By our count, that leaves ’em with just about 37 days to spill the beans!
Note: The picture above is just our creative interpretation of what a Chromebook may look like — don’t come crying to us when the actual device looks a lot prettier.
Chrome OS consumer launch pushed to 2011, Google-branded Chromebook could still arrive this year originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 24 Nov 2010 12:10:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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To find out the best laptops of 2010, we checked in with Mark Spoonauer who, as editor-in-chief of Laptop Magazine and Laptopmag.com, oversaw 140+ notebook and netbook reviews this year. If you’re buying, buy one of these. More »
iPad owners have had less than a week with iOS 4, but a software update offering news and magazine subscriptions targeted at them could arrive in less than a month.
Daring Fireball’s John Gruber reports that Apple’s Steve Jobs will join News Corp.’s Rupert Murdoch onstage at a December 9 event to announce Murdoch’s new forthcoming tablet newspaper, The Daily.
According to Gruber’s sources, The Daily will be an app in the App Store, but make use of new recurring subscription billing on users’ iTunes accounts, and “developers at News Corp. building the app already have preliminary documentation on the new subscription billing APIs from Apple.”
Macstories’ Federico Viticci reports further that recurring subscriptions are part of a new version of iOS — iOS 4.3 — with a scheduled release date of December 13.
According to Viticci’s sources, iOS 4.3 wasn’t intended to be released so quickly after 4.2.1, which was originally internally slated for an early November release. It’s possible that 4.2.1’s later official release might also push back the release of 4.3. But with Apple playing such a large role in The Daily, both companies may stick with mid-December announcement and releases, after all.
Subscription-based recurring billing would likely increase the number of paid magazine, newspaper, TV, video and other media applications on iTunes. Really, any application that depends on continuous content or service delivery could introduce a subscription model: online gaming, data backup, GPS, office applications and more. Many subscription-based services already have iOS apps, but have to establish accounts and recurring billing separately from iTunes.
Another technical challenge posed by subscriptions that could require an OS update is automatic background content delivery. If you’re being billed every week for a newspaper or magazine, you shouldn’t have to go through a long, complicated routine just to download a new issue.
A final open question: How much customer information will Apple and app/content makers share with each other about their subscribers? This data has value, too — as does customers’ privacy.
Image by Apple.
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Happy…Black Wednesday? We’ve still got two days left until Black Friday, but that’s not going to stop Amazon from offering up some sweet deals. The retail giant is celebrating the kick off of holiday shopping all week, from this Monday through Cyber Monday.
There’s lots to choose from on the site, but here are some of our top picks for this non-existent holiday, after the jump.
Sony said it was coming, and come it has. Just in time for expatriated Americans basking in the glory of being paid in pounds to enjoy over “Thanksgiving,” Sony has flipped the switch on its Qriocity on-demand movie service. The UK launch marks the European debut of the service (we’re also hearing that it’s like ‘across Europe’), offering “hundreds” of pay-per-view streaming flicks to those with a network-enabled BRAVIA TV, Blu-ray player or Blu-ray home theater system. We’re told that the library consists of material from Fox Home Entertainment, Lionsgate, MGM, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, Starz Digital Media, The Walt Disney Company, NBC Universal and Warner Bros., with both new releases and heralded classics up for grabs. Rental prices for SD content start from £2.49 for library content and £3.49 for new releases, while HD content start respectively from £3.49 and £4.49. Not exactly free, but it’s a small price to pay to keep that keister planted on Turkey Day.
Continue reading Sony’s Qriocity video-on-demand services goes live in Europe
Sony’s Qriocity video-on-demand services goes live in Europe originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 24 Nov 2010 11:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Did you know that today is National Opt Out Day? No? You’re not alone. The day that was organized to create a sense of havoc amongst Thanksgiving travelers hasn’t really materialized–at least not according to the TSA.
Angry travelers recently declared the day before Thanksgiving National Opt Out Day, asking people to elect to have a security pat down, rather than walking through the newly instated full body scanners.
According to the theory, if enough people required pat downs, the security lines would become tied up, creating a general sense of chaos for the already over stretched travel industry. Other protesters, meanwhile, promised to wear “Don’t Touch My Junk” t-shirts and other articles of jokey protest clothing.
According to TSA administrator John Pistole, however, airport security isn’t seeing much effect from the announced protests. He told ABC that the organization is prepared for such issues. “The bottom line is that if a number of people protest at a particular checkpoint it will definitely slow things down,” he told Good Morning America. “I just feel bad for the rest of the traveling public that’s trying to get home for the holidays to be with their loved ones.”
This article was written on January 05, 2010 by CyberNet.
I heard about the InvisibleHand Firefox/Chrome extension on the Windows Weekly podcast, and it sounded like something that would be useful for all the online shopping that I do. Its purpose is to notify you when something you’re looking at or searching for can be found even cheaper at another site on the web. As you can see above when I was searching for a copy of Windows 7 Home Premium on Amazon it notified me that it was $6.50 cheaper on Buy.com. It’s very unobtrusive, which is a must for an add-on like this.
It supports 52 different retailers in the United States, 46 in the U.K., and 15 in Germany. What’s nice is that the “View all offers” button doesn’t take you to ad-ridden site, and instead presents you with a simple drop-down list of the other retailers, sorted by price, who match your product.
The add-on obviously makes money through affiliate programs thereby giving the developers a percentage of the purchases that you make. That doesn’t bother me because I think that it’s a no-brainer way to help support the add-on development cycle. From my point of view the downside is the data they collect:
This add-on is awesome and all, but I’m not a huge fan of products that are keeping tabs on my surfing habits. Unfortunately the only option you really get with InvisibleHand is whether you want it to automatically do price lookups for the things you’re Googling for, too. You can’t actually turn it on or off as needed, which for me is a necessity. Personally I’m going to leave the extension installed, but I’ve disabled it in the add-ons management screen so that I can switch it on only when I need it.
Get InvisibleHand for Firefox or Chrome
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Holiday travel has never been easy. In recent years, it’s become all the more difficult, with increased security due to perceived threats. In 2010, another element was added to the mix, as the TSA introduced full body scanners, asking passengers to either expose themselves or consent to a pat down.
Irate travels today are asking fellow passengers to join them in their protests, boycotting scanners in favor of pat downs, so as to create havoc in security lines.
And now we’re seeing the greatest disturbance of all: people going to the bathroom. A lot.
Security pulled a passenger off of a plane on route to Denver from Fort Lauderdale this week after he apparently took one too many trips to the loo. His fellow passengers said the man was “acting weird.” A K9 unit was brought onto the flight after it landed in Denver. The passenger was reportedly question and detained briefly.
A security scan of the plane found nothing suspicious.
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