Hasta La Gadget!

For this week’s giveaway, we’re serving up the Orb TV, a hockey-puck-size device that lets you stream music and video to your TV.

This article was written on December 16, 2010 by CyberNet.

Windows only
Several years ago we wrote an article covering some different ways you can assign a drive letter to an FTP site, and now that some time has passed I decided to check been in on a few of the apps that we’ve mentioned. I had an issue finding Novell’s NetDrive app, but with a little Google searching I stumbled upon a similar app that also goes by the name of NetDrive (it’s only free for non-commercial use). It doesn’t appear to be affiliated with Novell’s program, but it left me impressed regardless.

MacroData’s NetDrive is a polished app that is able to connect to both FTP and WebDAV servers even over a proxy connection. It comes pre-populated with several notable FTP locations for universities and companies, but they are all disconnected by default. You can manually choose to connect any of them, set them to connect upon startup, or add your own custom FTP sites.

The thing I love about NetDrive is that the drive letter that is assigned to the FTP site can even be accessed by other applications including DOS. That makes this a great utility for anyone wanting to tinker around with batch files that transfer files to/from remote locations. Of course you could use built-in Windows command-line FTP interface, but being able to use something like robocopy with an FTP server is pretty huge.

Here are some of the features highlighted by the developer:

• You can use NetDrive Site Manager to easily register and connect to all remote servers you wish to access.
• Simply map your drive to a specific site and it will be configured automatically the next time your Windows starts. You can add as many sites as you want.
• When you connect to a remote server, a drive letter will be mapped and you can transfer files and folders by drag and drop in Windows Explorer. You can manage files and folders with a click of mouse.
• NetDrive supports direct file operation in mapped drive. You can run any .exe files in remote server from your Windows explorer. To watch a movie file in your remote server, you just need to double click it.
• Once you install NetDrive, you will see an icon created in your system tray. (Right click your mouse on the icon to view menu) NetDrive tray icon provides shortcuts to use.
• NetDrive. You can open the site manager, configure NetDrive, connect to registered site or view logs.
• You can customize the program settings from Setup menu. From Setup menu, you can manage action after connection, auto-connection to specific site when Windows starts and log monitoring.
• Since NetDrive provides Windows system driver to mount drive, you can use DOS-prompt to use commands like copy, xcopy and dir. Other DOS-based legacy applications can be used since NetDrive provides DOS based file access.

If you’re in the market for an app like this I’d highly recommend checking it out, but remember it’s only free for home/non-commercial use. Otherwise it will run you $29 for a license.

NetDrive Homepage (Windows only; Free for Home Use)

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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IMovie will run on your old, slow, bloated iPad as well as the shiny new one

It is possible to install the new iPad 2-only iMovie on the original iPad. You don’t need to jailbreak, and the app runs perfectly well, but there is one big problem which may annoy you into uninstalling it. Read on to find out how.

The App Store checks your hardware and stops you from downloading iMove with an unsupported iDevice. Get around this by downloading iMove using iTunes on your computer. Then you need to download a piece of software from Apple called the iPhone Configuration Utility. There are versions for Mac and PC.

Next, plug in your iPad and wait for it to finish syncing with iTunes. Launch the iPhone Configuration Utility and pick the “Application” tab at left. Then click “Add” at the top of the window and navigate to the newly downloaded iMovie app (inside the Music/iTunes/Mobile Applications folder on a Mac).

Adding the iMovie app to the iPhone Configuration Utility

Once added, you’ll need to actually install it on your iPad. To do this, click on the name of your iPad in the left column and then select the “Applications” tab. Scroll through the list of apps until you get to iMovie. Then click the “Install” button next to it (the screenshot shows it already installed, as I have already installed it on my own iPad).

Installing…

And that’s it. You can now fire up iMovie and start editing. Any compatible video already in your Photos app will show up, and everything seem to run plenty quick enough.

But there’s one problem. Next time you sync the iPad with iTunes, you get this error message:

This annoying box will pop up every time you sync

Authorizing doesn’t help. You just get sent back to this warning after inputting your password. Clicking “Don’t authorize’ will delete iMove from your iPad. Clicking cancel is the one you want. Cancel and iMovie stays.

It appears that this warning only applies to iMovie. I have updated other apps on my iPad since installing iMovie, and that went fine. Syncing then copied those new apps back to the iPad. I imagine it may be possible to get rid of this warning using provisioning profiles, but for now just clicking “cancel” once on each sync works fine.

One final note: Getting footage into iMovie is absurdly complicated. If you have an iPhone, you can shoot movies and import them using the camera connection kit. But if you have a camera that shoots iPad-compatible movies, you’re out of luck. You may be able to view the clip in the Photos app, but it doesn’t show up in the source list of iMovie. Or it does. It just depends on which camera you are using.

It’s probably better to run iMovie on the iPad 2, complete with guaranteed-compatible camera, but if you’re happy to do a little hacking, then your iPad 1 is certainly up to the job.

We’ve seen some pretty wild-looking means of transportation in our day — the FOF-inducing BMW Flymag concept and Airbike 3D-printed nylon bicycle, for example — and now comes a vehicle that practically defies description: the EX. In what can only be described as over-engineering run amok, this custom-built three-wheeler is powered by two electric screwdrivers and can hurtle one brave soul headfirst down the road at speeds up to 30km/h (almost 19mph for those using real units of measure). The joint connecting the front and rear portions of the frame lets riders steer with “organically floating movement” that leans the driver into every turn — hopefully the handling is a bit more predictable than the trike’s design. So, if you’re lining up to buy one in a parallel universe, there’s just one question left to answer… Philips or flat-head?

EX trike powered by dual electric screwdrivers, designed by eccentrics originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 11 Mar 2011 06:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If you were expecting your new 13-inch MacBook Pro’s Core i7 CPU to Turbo Boost its way north of that default 2.7GHz clock speed, we might suggest discontinuing your anticipation. Two separate reviews of the laptop are reporting the curious case of its Core i7-2620M processor failing to automatically overclock itself the way it should. Intel’s dual-core chip is capable of a maximum speed of 3.4GHz, but reviewers weren’t able to get it any higher than its stock setting while testing Apple’s latest 13-incher. High temperatures were identified (north of 90C / 194F) as the likely culprit, with Notebook Journal also finding its machine throttled down to 798MHz due to heat dissipation issues. PC Pro theorizes that Apple intentionally disabled the Turbo Boost functionality on this particular MBP model in order to preserve your lap and your pride from being scalded by melting components. That would make sense to us, and hey, it’s still a fast machine, just not Turbo fast.

[Thanks, Markus]

Update: AnandTech‘s findings contradict the above, with Anand asserting that “there’s absolutely no funny business going on here, the dual-core 2.7 is allowed to hit its maximum frequencies.” Seems like we’ll need to keep digging to get to the bottom of this one.

Update 2: We’ve confirmed with Apple that there are no specific hardware or software limits to block the Turbo Boost function, however we’ve also discovered, through less direct sources, that the company is providing new low level software tools to diagnose cooling issues with the 2011 batch of laptops. Ergo, the speed limits that PC Pro and Notebook Journal encountered might have been caused by inadequate heat dissipation, which arguably is no less troubling than an Apple-mandated de-Turbo-fication.

Intel Turbo Boost is MIA on new 13-inch MacBook Pro? (update: negatory) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 11 Mar 2011 05:10:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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