The Nexus S might be a groovy piece of hardware, but what we’re really hot and bothered for is Android 2.3 Gingerbread. More »
Are you a Gearlog fan–or perhaps just trying to impress someone who is? Good news, you can finally like our site in the only place it really matters: on Facebook. In honor of the redesign, we’ve finally launched a Facebook fan page for our site to help you follow the latest tech news and poke us and do all of those other things people like to do on the Facebook.
And don’t forgot to follow us on the Twitter, while you’re at.
Well, color us surprised. Just last Wednesday, Samsung announced that it had developed its very own NFC module in-house, but today we’re learning that it came just a few months too late for inclusion in the outfit’s forthcoming Nexus S. Right on cue, NXP Semiconductors has come forward today proclaiming its involvement in the first handset to ship with Android 2.3. The outfit’s PN544 NFC controller and accompanying open source software stack will be used in the Nexus S, and naturally they’ve both been “fully integrated and validated on Gingerbread.” Of course, only time will tell what sort of applications spring up to take advantage, but we’ve got a feeling that metro payments and the like could be first in line. Nice of America to finally catch up, right?
Continue reading Samsung Nexus S utilizing NXP’s PN544 NFC chip
Samsung Nexus S utilizing NXP’s PN544 NFC chip originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 06 Dec 2010 14:38:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Those poor citizens of the Midwest–they couldn’t even get online to see that their Tumblr pages had been knocked offline. A Comcast outage hit Minnesota, Michigan, and Indiana last night.
Comcast spokesman Bill Gerth addressed the problem via the company’s Twitter page, writing, “I apologize for the down time” and stating that the company was looking into the issue. According to later tweets, the downtime was the result of “DNS related issues.”
As of this afternoon, Comcast seems to have the issues mostly cleared up, though Gerth is still fielding complaints from a number of Comcast customers in the area.
The software giant is not keeping supply low to drum up demand for its motion-gaming peripheral, spokesman tells gaming site in recent interview.
Originally posted at The Digital Home
Google officially shares what’s cooking in Gingerbread, its Android 2.3 mobile OS release.
Originally posted at Android Atlas
A software keyboard may sound anathema to Palm, with its rich history of wonderful QWERTY keyboards, but you had to feel it was coming, what with the wild consumer adoption of slate devices and, you know, the economy these days. Well, after a short history of hints in webOS 2.0’s code and a longer history of hacks, a full-on Palm-developed software keyboard has been found in shipping webOS 2.0 devices. It takes a little bit of a hack and a restart, and apparently it’s buggy as well, oh and you have to use the physical keyboard to enter the Opt+Sym+K command that opens the virtual keys. Still, none of these shortcomings are going to stop us from sketching out slick, slim slate phones in our diaries, translating that understated elegance of the Pre 2 into a screen-dominated form factor with our unbridled imaginations, leaving the Pre’s cramped hardware keyboard in the past as we sprint into a glorious future of tangible webOS 2.0 market share and maybe a threaded email app or something. Sorry, we’re done. Check out a video of the keyboard in action while we wipe the drool off our chins.
Continue reading Software keyboard pops up in webOS 2.0, dreams of a Palm slate phone flourish
Software keyboard pops up in webOS 2.0, dreams of a Palm slate phone flourish originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 06 Dec 2010 14:13:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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To-do lists of the past were scribbled in notebooks, on sticky notes, or on whiteboards. Today, they live in our smatphones. Or at least they should. More »
Looks like the Motorola i1 Android set (not pictured above) will stand as the highest-end Nextel phone ever — Sprint just announced that it’s phasing out the iDEN network sometime in 2013 as it begins a new four to five billion dollar network enhancement project called “Network Vision.” We’ve expected this for a while — the Sprint / Nextel merger has been beset by subscriber losses and rumors of a breakup for years now — but this is the first time we’ve gotten a date. Sprint’s rolling out push-to-talk on its own network to support its 10.6 million Nextel customers, but we don’t have a schedule for that yet. Sprint’s also announcing vendors for Network Vision: Alcatel-Lucent, Samsung, and Ericsson will each handle a region and be tasked with expanding and fortifying Sprint’s existing 1900MHz 3G network while buying 800MHz, 1900MHz, and 2.5GHz spectrum for future use. Interestingly, Sprint’s definitely hedging its WiMAX bets a little — it can upgrade its new gear to LTE with swapping in a baseband card and issuing a software patch, which certainly gives the company some 4G flexibility should Clearwire not pull things together. We’ll see what happens — the underdog’s making some moves.
Sprint phasing out Nextel’s iDEN network, selects vendors for $5b network upgrade project originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 06 Dec 2010 13:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Most of us were disappointed to learn that NASA’s new life form wasn’t an alien, but instead an arsenic based bacteria. But while that may not sound that exciting, the bacteria could potentially have plenty of green benefits.
According to phosphorus expert Dr. James Elder, the newly discovered creatures could be put to use cleaning up toxic waste. Since arsenate is a common build-up with toxic waste, these creatures could be ideal for helping with clean up efforts. But that’s not all! Elder also says that there’s potential for an arsenic based ethanol, which could serve as a very efficient alternative fuel. As opposed to traditional ethanol, an arsenic-based one wouldn’t require the growing of crops. And, thanks to the arsenic, the new ethanol also wouldn’t be easily contaminated.
These are all just ideas, of course, but they show that these tiny bacteria may just have a bigger impact here on Earth than we thought.
Via io9
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