Hasta La Gadget!

With the great NFC race looming, Google is axing support for QR Codes in their Places service. QR codes made a noble play for the hearts and minds of nerds, but honestly, I hope this is the first step towards their complete and utter annihilation. More »

Publically, Amazon wants you to think it doesn’t care about licensing the music that it will let you store in the cloud, but privately we’re hearing the company is scrambling like mad to work things out with angry music labels as we speak. Specifically, the Wall Street Journal cites a pair of anonymous sources who say Amazon’s actually negotiating deals with the four major labels right now — though Amazon won’t confirm such a thing — which the e-tailer hopes to close in a matter of weeks. What’s more, they say Amazon may move to an system that compares users’ uploaded songs with a database of those tunes it’s managed to licence should the deal go through — a system much like Sony’s Music Unlimited, by the sound of it. It shouldn’t come as any surprise, then, that the Journal quotes Sony Music chairman Martin Bandier in its final paragraph, who makes his pointed indignation at Amazon’s announcement heard:

“This is just another land grab. I can’t make it any plainer than that. It’s really disrespectful, and of course we are considering all of our options.”

Nothing like a little bit of mainstream media coverage to help pressure a business deal.

Amazon negotiating for Cloud Player music licensing deals after all? originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 30 Mar 2011 23:08:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If you’re like us — that is to say, wildly popular and devastatingly good looking — then you’re probably wondering why someone hasn’t produced an action figure in your likeness yet. Well wonder no longer, for the folks over at MakerBot just announced yet another handy tool to make at home 3D printing even easier. An addition to the aptly titled Thing-O-Matic, the Gen 4 Interface Board Kit v1.1 is billed as a DIY interface that lets you operate your thingy printer without having to attach it to a PC. The kit comes equipped with an SD card slot for easy independent operation, and because the board’s fully hackable, you can use it to control your robots or homebrew CNC devices, too. It sports nine programmable buttons and an LCD screen for feedback, and allows you to set and read temperatures, view build progress, or start a new project stored on the SD card. So what are you waiting for? Your self-aggrandizing bobblehead isn’t going to make itself.

MakerBot’s Interface Board Kit does PC-less 3D printing, turns your superhero fantasies into reality originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 30 Mar 2011 22:36:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Uh oh, the day has finally come. We just gathered from Joystiq (and confirmed ourselves) that the renowned Android first-gen PlayStation emulator, PSX4Droid, has been pulled from the Market. The reason? Its author, ZodTTD, said Google informed him that it was a matter of “Content Policy violation,” however the fact it’s taken eight months for Google to take action suggests it might have a little something to do with the imminent launch of the Xperia Play, which will have its own mechanism to power the original PlayStation’s games. Another mystery is that it looks like other emulators such as SNesoid (SNES), GameBoid (Game Boy) and, in particular, FPSe (PlayStation) appear to be safe for now, which might suggest that there are other reasons behind this removal; but still, the timing suggests otherwise. On the bright side, we can always rely on third-party app markets.

Update: Here’s a super generic statement we just received from Google regarding this matter:

“We remove apps from Android Market that violate our policies.”

Android PlayStation emulator PSX4Droid pulled from Market, timing pointing at Xperia Play (updated) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 30 Mar 2011 22:16:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The company that operates the GoGo in-flight Internet service has introduced an Android smartphone that will let business travelers place calls while in the air.

Originally posted at Android Atlas