Hasta La Gadget!

Can’t get enough New York Times over your Whispernet? Worry not, dear Kindle reader, for Amazon’s on a roll with its announcements today, the latest of which is that a subscription to the NYT on its world-conquering e-reader will also grant users access to the paywall-protected NYTimes.com online portal. No complex rules or conditions, you’ll just be one of the insiders who get unfettered access to all the fine old school journalism practiced at Times towers. See Amazon’s press release after the break or hit the source link to learn more about the $28-a-month (for international users) subscription.

Update: The sub price is $20 in the USA, the $28 cost we first saw relates to those signing up from the UK and other international markets. Thanks, russke!

Continue reading Kindle subscription to the New York Times will net you free web access as well

Kindle subscription to the New York Times will net you free web access as well originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 29 Mar 2011 07:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Image sensor makers are putting their best foot forward with a technique called backside illumination, and it’s catching on. Also, Sony details BSI chips for phones.

Originally posted at Deep Tech

Brando’s cheap-o scanner lets you pirate magazines, or electronify your own notes

I have a folder somewhere in my iPhoto with the pages of my mother’s recipe books hastily photographed. The idea was to grab a copy of all my favorite childhood dishes and render them into a form I’d actually use — OCR-ed images.

As you might expect, things didn’t go so well. I was late for the airport, so I rushed things, ending up with blurred pictures, pages out-of-square and image files that are way bigger than they need to be. Brando’s wonderfully-named “O King Scanner” wouldn’t have gotten me out of bed any earlier, but it would have helped everything else. But first, a bullet point from the product blurb which makes the whole thing sound almost Victorian.

The image files scanned by O King Scanner (S200) could be faxed to destination through network fax so that you do not need another fax machines or you can do it by traditional electrograph.

Electrograph! Don’t worry — it does more than prepping images for the fax.

The 1600×1200 (1.6MP) camera is situated in a fold-out arm with a stand. You flip it open, place it over the target paper item (up to A4 paper size — roughly the size of a sheet of legal paper) and hook it up to a computer via USB. From here you can grab shots after lining everything up on your big screen. Included Windows software will also perform OCR and allow you to edit the photo. Mac users can just use Preview and then send the pictures to Evernote of the OCR part.

For quick pictures of text, your cellphone can probably do the job just fine. For those with more paper to scan, but without the need for a proper, high end scanner, the $120 price might be just right. Available now. Oh, and if my mother is reading, can you send me your meat pie recipe?

O King Scanner product page [Brando via Oh Gizmo]

See Also:

• The $20 DIY Book Scanner
• Tiny Document Scanner Banishes Paper Forever
• Portable Scanner Doxie Adds some Zing to Scanning

It’s skinny, it’s fast, and it can do some seriously fun stuff with its gyroscope accelerometer. Yes, we’re talking about the Galaxy S II, Samsung’s upcoming followup to one of Android’s biggest successes to date, the Galaxy S. The new handset will bring with it a revised version of Sammy’s Android skin, TouchWiz 4.0, which will harness the motion sensors inside the phone to allow you to zoom in and out of webpages as well as navigate the UI with the movement of your hands. Basically, instead of the traditional pinch-to-zoom, resting two fingers atop the screen will allow you to zoom in by bringing the S II closer to your face or zoom out by holding it further away — a naturalistic gesture that makes all the sense in the world to us. Moreover, when adding new widgets to your home panels, you’ll be able to move between them by propelling the phone laterally. It’s quirky and appealing stuff, see it on video below.

[Thanks, Lawrence]

Update: We initially thought this was done using the gyroscope inside the Galaxy S II, but as commenter ClioCreslind helpfully points out, it’s far likelier that Samsung’s using the phone’s accelerometer to achieve its new fanciness.

Continue reading Samsung Galaxy S II shows off motion-zoom option in TouchWiz 4.0 (video)

Samsung Galaxy S II shows off motion-zoom option in TouchWiz 4.0 (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 29 Mar 2011 06:05:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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While Spotify still isn’t available to US households, the streaming music service just made its first jump to European audio receivers with the help of Onkyo. Having already made its first move to the living room on Sonos systems back in September, Spotify Premium subscribers in Finland, France, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, and the UK can now stream 320kbps audio while browsing their personal, what’s new, and starred playlists from televisions connected to any 2011 networked home cinema receiver from Onkyo, starting with the new 7.2 channel TX-NR609. With any luck, Onkyo will soon be updating its Onkyo Remote iOS app to replace the need for a power-hungry TV just to browse Spotify’s 10 million tracks. Sorry North America, at least you’ve still got dibs on Rdio.

Spotify now streaming over European Onkyo receivers originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 29 Mar 2011 05:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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