New York has been miserable for the past few weeks, with sodding rain and low grey clouds every day. It feels like bloody London and makes everyone miss the Spring sun. This beautiful video will make you miss it even more. More »
Look closely at that blue blob up above and you’ll realize it’s made up of 500 butterflies, each one meticulously cut from photovoltaic cells. The hundreds of insects collect the sun’s rays as they flutter around a giant glass bulb that turns into a churning mass of light after dusk. The Virtue of Blue chandelier is a stunning work of art by Dutch designer Jeroen Verhoeven that draws connections between the beauty and power of nature and the importance of sustainable energy… or, you know, just something trippy to stare at while you sip a few cocktails at the Blain|Southern gallery in London.
Gallery: Virtue of Blue
Solar-powered butterfly chandelier is a fluttering mass of art and light originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 24 May 2011 07:52:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Inhabitat | 
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Onavo runs your incoming data through a proxy server, saving bandwidth
Onavo is an app which cuts your cellphone data use drastically. Amazingly, it works in the background even on the iPhone and iPad, which sounds like some kind of impossible voodoo given Apple’s strict multitasking rules.
It turns out that the app does actually compress data, but not how you think. Once installed, it performs some tweaks to your network settings and runs all you non-Wi-Fi data through a proxy. Thus, any incoming data to Safari, Mail, Facebook, Google Maps and Twitter passes through Onavo’s servers where it is heavily compressed before being forwarded on to your iPhone.
This is similar to what Opera does when you use its iOS browser, but it works system wide.
Comments on the iTunes App Store page say that it works, with several caveats. First, images are compressed so drastically that they can pixelate, making the tiles in the Maps app hard to read, for example. Also, sometimes visual voicemail disappears, and you’ll lose the ability to tether your data connection. And of course you are running your data through a third-party server, which could give you the privacy heebie-jeebies.
Onavo is free, and although its probably not worth using at home thanks to the above problems, it could save you a lot of money when you’re on vacation with a roaming plan. What it won’t do is compress streaming video or VoIP calls, which are probably your biggest data-sinks, further limiting its utility. An Android version is coming “soon.”
Onavo product page [Onavo]
FAQ [Onavo]
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Barnes & Noble will be showing off a new Nook on Tuesday. Get the full skinny in real time as we live blog the unveiling.
Last November, to the surprise and dismay of many, the European Commission decided it needed to stimulate some homegrown innovation in the mobile space and pulled together €22 million in a public/private investment designed to help Symbian get ahead. It was intended to turn Nokia’s former lover into the Embedded Operating System for Europe (hence the name SYMBEOSE), but alas the breakup between Symbian and the Finnish mobile maker was too much to overcome. The EC has decided, quite rightly, that there’s no sense in continuing its symbtopia project, and now a member of Neelie Kroes’ team has confirmed the entire venture has been cancelled. European taxpayers (two of whom you see on the right) will also be glad to know that no money has exchanged hands, so the bullet has been well and truly dodged. Guess that’s why they’re looking so happy.
[Thanks, Danijel]
European Commission regains sanity, cancels €22 million SYMBEOSE project originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 24 May 2011 07:20:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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How effective is Apple’s Smart Cover? Will it protect your iPad 2 from a broken screen? The folks at SquareTrade decided to find out.
In the following video, you’ll see two iPads being dropped face first onto a concrete sidewalk from waist height. The bare naked iPad suffers predictable damage, and the screen shatters completely (although it still shows its image underneath the spider’s web of cracks). The Smart Cover equipped iPad survives unscathed.
What about shoulder height? That’s next, and the iPad almost comes through it, with just a few cracks at the edge of the screen.
Finally, some sadist decides to finish the poor white iPad off with a golf club. He whacks an iron into the iPad’s screen, and even the Smart Cover can’t save it. You may want to look away, especially if you haven’t managed to get an iPad 2 yet.
It’s an interesting test, and it makes me feel a little better about the protection offered by the Smart Cover, but I’m still skeptical. After all, unlike buttered toast an iPad is unlikely to fall on its face. I dropped my iPad 1 a few times (inside Apple’s rubber fetish case) and it always bounced on an edge or a corner. Given that the corner of my iPad 2 is already dented down to the glass, and that I haven’t actually dropped it yet (it’s a mystery scar), I doubt that it will survive even a moderate drop onto a hard floor.
iPad 2 Smart Cover Drop Test [YouTube via SquareTrade and TUAW]
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Is it any surprise robots are now invading our hotels too? At the Yotel, opening soon in Times Square, a robotic arm will hoist your bags into a storage locker–for a small fee.
Yes, tabletphones are coming back! Joining the eccentric Dell Streak 5 is Pantech’s conveniently named Vega No.5 (or IM-T100K), a 5-inch Android 2.3.3 smartphone powered by Qualcomm’s brawny dual-core 1.5GHz MSM8660. Apart from the extra 0.7 inches of screen size, what we have here is essentially the same package as the Vega Racer: 800 x 480 LCD, 8 megapixel 1080p camera, front-facing camera, 1GB DDR2 RAM, 16GB of memory, 802.11 b/g/n WiFi, and 14.4Mbps HSPA+ connectivity. No word on international availability, but expect this slate to hit the shops in Korea later this month. Hands-on video after the break.
Continue reading Pantech Vega No.5 bringing sexy back to tabletphones, packs 1.5GHz dual-core chip
Pantech Vega No.5 bringing sexy back to tabletphones, packs 1.5GHz dual-core chip originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 24 May 2011 06:54:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Sorry, ladies. The electric surfboard signals the end of buff, tanned surfers down at the beach
It seems like there is a conspiracy afoot. A conspiracy designed to turn even the sportiest of people into lazy lumps of lard. A conspiracy to put electric motors into every human-powered mode of transport.
Electric bikes for the frail or elderly I can understand, but an electric surfboard? Crazy. But that’s just what you get with the Wavejet, a “Personal Water Propulsion” engine which can be built into surfboards, kayaks or anything else that is both fun and that keeps you (until now) fit and trim.
The engine is powered by li-ion batteries and can produce 20 pounds of thrust for up to half an hour, after which you’ll have to plug it in to recharge. The idea of an electric surfboard, according to the blurb, is that you can catch faster-moving waves without being towed in. But surely the half-hour battery life would make that a rather short session?
And so the electrification of normally calorie-powered devices continues. Bikes, roller-skates, skateboards and now surfboards. What next? Electric dumbbells?
Wavejet product page [Wavejet via Uncrate]
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Paul Otellini already told us that we’d see new Android tablets running Intel silicon at Computex. Now DigiTimes is quoting loose-lipped upstream component makers who claim that Acer is set to launch its 10-inch Android 3.0 tablet built upon Intel’s Oak Trail platform in July. Mind you that’s the retail date, making the May 31st kickoff of Computex the perfect event to demonstrate the unARMed Android tablet for the first time in public. Of course, Acer was early with its Android-based netbook back in 2009 so it’s no surprise to see the company with another Google first in 2011. And really, without a suitable Microsoft tablet OS available until 2012, you can bet that Intel’s going to be pushing the Honeycomb port to x86 hard over the coming months with rigs from Lenovo and ASUS also tipped by DigiTimes. Oh, and for whatever it’s worth, the Taiwanese rumor rag also says that Acer is “evaluating” an Oak Trail with MeeGo tablet. Which version, we wonder?
Acer’s 10-inch Oak Trail tablet running Android 3.0 rumored for July delivery originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 24 May 2011 06:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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