Hasta La Gadget!

March 18th may seem like an eternity if you expected your Motorola Xoom to come with Adobe Flash on day one. But you know what? If you put your trust in a mysterious file floating about the internet, there’s no need to wait that long. MyDroidWorld obtained possession of a leaked build of Adobe Flash Player 10.2 for the Xoom, which doesn’t need root or even a preliminary update to install — you just need to check the “Unknown sources” box under Settings > Applications, sideload the file or download it from the Xoom’s browser and you’re good to go. The best part? Based on our preliminary testing, Flash performs exceedingly well on the Xoom’s dual-core Tegra 2 processor.

While this early build of Flash 10.2 was pretty choppy during HD playback, low-res video content rendered at perfectly viewable speeds, and we were able to play games (like Nanaca Crash and Canabalt) so long as they didn’t require anything more than single-button control schemes. By contrast, Hulu was a no-go (it’s still blocked), and this build has some kinks to work out when it comes to multitasking — while any single Flash site ran well and we could quickly tab between, the more Flash-heavy tabs we had open, the slower each one ran individually — which is why the video above starts out so choppy. Adobe’s UI also seemed to have some difficulty detecting when we wanted to make a Flash item full-screen. Typically, you double-tap an item to enlarge it, but sometimes that didn’t work, and other times a context-sensitive UI bar would randomly drop from the top of a Flash window to let us know we could focus on it individually. Before you judge the merits of Flash on tablet, however, remember that this is a leaked version of a beta release, and if it’s this good out of the gate, we’re pretty excited about how well it might perform after a few tweaks. Don’t miss our video above, and find the file you need to install Flash yourself at our source link.

Update: We managed to get Flash to drop one of those context-sensitive buttons during a session of Canabalt and make the window full screen, which not only enlarged the window but also seriously sped up our little runner — probably by redirecting the tablet’s resources to our game. Photographic proof after the break!

Update 2: We’ll be shooting a second video later in the day to show how the Xoom handles Flash one site at a time.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Continue reading Adobe Flash Player leaks for Motorola Xoom, we go hands-on (video)

Adobe Flash Player leaks for Motorola Xoom, we go hands-on (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 12 Mar 2011 16:10:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This article was written on March 29, 2008 by CyberNet.

One of the great things about the Mozilla Thunderbird mail client is that it has an extension system much like it’s browser counterpart Firefox. Because of this Thunderbird users can really benefit from features created by developers around the world, and a great example of this is with the Seek extension.

Seek actually capitalizes on an idea that has been around for ages, but it’s typically found only on websites. A prime example would be eBay where you can filter results according to the product type, and then by manufacturer, and so on. With Seek you’re able to filter through your emails using a faceted browsing system, which is essentially performing searches using multiple criteria. For example, you can have Thunderbird show only the emails from a specific person that were sent in the last week directly to you.

A screenshot doesn’t really capture just how great this feature is, and so here’s a quick screencast put together by the developers:

Seek is a great idea, but I’ve moved my email management over to Gmail so that they are easily accessible from anywhere. The good news is that Gmail has a similar system setup except that it is classified as an “advanced search” (located next to the search box). It doesn’t have an interface quite as sharp as Seek’s, but it serves a similar purpose for those of you not wanting to use a desktop email client. With it you can filter your emails based on multiple criteria including when the emails were sent.

Get the Seek Thunderbird Extension
Thanks to Jack of all Trades for the tip!

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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That’s the E65 7 Series up there, considered by many to be as ugly a car as they come. It’s the product of one Chris Bangle, Chief Designer at BMW for most of the ’90s and ’00s, who strove to give cars a futuristic, deconstructivist design that didn’t always find favor among car buyers who were still stuck in an orderly present. Now we actually are in the future and, well, that rear-end still isn’t looking any better, but Bangle did pave the way for more dramatic stylings in modern cars. He stepped away from the auto industry two years ago and now we’re hearing that he’s moving on to a gig at Samsung. Interestingly, Sammy and BMW have had something of a relationship over the years. We saw newer 7 Series sprout support for the T*Omnia in 2009, and back in 2005 Samsung’s Chief Marketing Officer told Bloomberg that the company needed to “become like a BMW.” According to Korean paper JoongAng Ilbo, Bangle will be working on cellphones and netbooks, which we expect to feature dramatic flame surfacing along with Dame Edna indicator lights and oddly bulging posteriors.

[Thanks, Tim]

Chris Bangle, former BMW designer, bringing his deconstructivist ways to Samsung devices? originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 12 Mar 2011 13:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Zoom’s H1 Handy Recorder has built-in stereo microphones and does MP3 and up to 96-KHz/24-bit high-resolution audio on the cheap.

Originally posted at The Audiophiliac

It’s true, a team of researchers have created a one-cubic-millimeter throwaway camera, and if they have their way, it could be peeking inside you in the next year. The new tiny shooters, which sport a 250 x 250 pixel resolution, are created using a streamlined process in which the lens and sensor wafers are affixed before being cut into a series of 28,000 little cameras — eliminating the need to mount and wire each one individually. This new mode of production cuts back on cost significantly, allowing physicians to throw away the little guys after routing around in your intestines. According to the camera’s creators, their diminutive invention could make its way into your doctor’s office as early as 2012.

Researchers create microscopic disposable camera to see up in your guts originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 12 Mar 2011 10:10:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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