Sep 20

HTC Rhyme preorders said to begin September 22, Plum-colored exclusive at Target? (updated)

Posted in: Android, gingerbread, HTC, htc sense, HtcSense, mobilepostcross, smartphone, Today's Chili

Ahead of HTC’s big announcement, a tipster has leaked this screen-grab from Target Mobile showing the HTC Rhyme (formerly the Bliss), ready for eager fans to pre-order from September 22nd — apparently the official launch date. Target Mobile looks to have exclusive rights on a plum-colored version of the Verizon handset, previously seen in white and green. The leak also adds some early details on the rumored charm notifier, which lights up to announce incoming calls and messages. It appears to connect to the headphone jack and will apparently work “outside of clothing.” In-ear buds appear to be included and, while it’s still unclear whether these will also be Beats Audio offerings, it certainly would be name-appropriate. Handset details sound pretty concrete, seemingly confirmed by another leak at Unwired View, with a 3.7-inch WVGA Super LCD screen (matching that on the HTC Desire S), Android Gingerbread and a rear-facing five megapixel camera. According to the leaks — and even the official-looking renders — it will be one of the first phones to arrive with HTC’s refreshed Sense 3.5 UI. The smart money is on an appearance at HTC’s soiree later today, and we’ll be there to find out for sure.

Update: We just got word from Target’s PR team that the Rhyme will go up for pre-order tomorrow, September 21st, instead of the 22nd. The rep also confirmed that the retailer will be accepting pre-orders at 1,492 Target Mobile locations through the 26th (the Rhyme goes on sale on the 29th).

HTC Rhyme preorders said to begin September 22, Plum-colored exclusive at Target? (updated) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 20 Sep 2011 08:40:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sep 20

Mac-Matching HDD Enclosure With Glowing Apple Logo

Posted in: Accessories and Peripherals, Apple, Today's Chili

The use of the Apple logo may have riled up some lawyers

Got an old 2.5-inch hard drive lying around but don’t know what to do with it? Or worse, you have a fully-functioning external drive but its just too hideous to remove from the closet (<cough> Lacie </cough>)? Well, if you are also a Mac owner, there’s good news for you in the shape of the iHdd 2 Slim External Hard Drive Enclosure.

Looking a lot like an oversized iPhone, this enclosure ships empty, ready to be filled with the bare 2.5-inch drive you already own (up to 500GB in size). The drive connects vie USB, is bus-powered and the Apple logo lights up when it’s in action.

Best of all, the enclosure costs just $26. Or rather, it did. Amazon says that “We don’t know when or if this item will be back in stock,” making me suspect that the unauthorized use of the Apple logo has led to some legal shenanigans. Hopefully not, because I actually do have a stack of otherwise useless 2.5-inch drives in my closet.

iHdd 2 Slim External Hard Drive Enclosure [Amazon via Fancy and Oh Gizmo]

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Sep 20

Researchers convert soundwaves into electromagnetic energy, silence no longer golden

Posted in: germany, Japan, Today's Chili, video

Researchers in Japan and Germany have converted energy from soundwaves into electromagnetic energy, trapping a magnetic “spin current” between metal layers. In the experiment, when sound waves are directed at an interface between the thin metal layer and magnetic material, electrical signals are generated at a pair of electrodes attached above. When the soundwaves reach the magnetic material, this creates a spin current that gets picked up by three layers of metal. This is where the exercise class-sounding reverse spin Hall effect kicks in, transforming it into an electrical voltage.

Not to be confused with Orange’s Sound Charge T-Shirt, scientists believe that it should be possible to generate that mystical electromagnetic energy from any material in the future. At the moment, the project is looking into materials that are able to eke out more voltage from the process — perhaps a few years later screaming at our phones will give their batteries a boost? Watch the video after the break for more technical details and close-ups of the equipment.

Continue reading Researchers convert soundwaves into electromagnetic energy, silence no longer golden

Researchers convert soundwaves into electromagnetic energy, silence no longer golden originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 20 Sep 2011 08:24:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sep 20

eBay Gets a New Look, New Features

Posted in: Features, Today's Chili, Web Sites

This article was written on September 19, 2007 by CyberNet.

eBay is in the process of making some major changes to the look and feel of the site in hopes of bringing people back to buy and sell. They’ve come a long way in the 12 years that they’ve been around, but over the last few years, things have gotten a bit rocky.  According to a recent article in Business Week, this is "eBay’s bid to win back buyers." With multiple places online to buy and sell, eBay is no longer "the" place to go.

So what is it that has changed? Probably the most obvious is the look of their new home page. Sometimes change is hard for people to deal with, and in this situation, I think that’s the case. Now when a user logs in, they’ll see four main things – eBay categories, My Recent Activities, My eBay at a Glance which includes items you’re watching or selling, reminders, and more, and the option to Start shopping.

ebay changes

Another change you’ll notice as Download Squad pointed out, is that there’s now more options for viewing items that you’re searching for. In certain categories like computers – instead of just viewing all the items in a list, you can view them in a picture gallery, or snapshot view.  The picture gallery is probably going to be the most beneficial because you get to see an image of what’s being sold, but you also have pertinent information like the price, shipping costs, and when it was listed. Think of it as window shopping.

ebay changes 2

This is only just the beginning of what eBay has in store. Coming soon they’ll have a few new features. One of them is  "quick and easy," an option for selling items, and another is a countdown- a new way to manage and bid on auctions. The last change we can expect soon is one click bidding where users won’t be taken to a new page to confirm the bid that they entered.

If you’d like to test out some of eBay’s new features which they haven’t rolled out quite yet on their main site, you can visit The Playground where you’ll see some of the new things eBay is testing out.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Sep 20

iTwin’s filesharing USB gets official OS X compatibility, still plays nice with Windows too

Posted in: mac os x, MacOsX, minipost, os x, OsX, Today's Chili, usb, usb drive, UsbDrive, video, Windows
Sure, iTwin’s USB filesharing drive has had Mac OS X (Lion and Snow Leopard) support in beta for some time now, but things just got official. If you’ll recall, the iTwin’s a double-sided splittable USB plug that allows you to play James Bond and remotely access files over the web under AES encryption of the 256-bit variety. Whether you’re moving files between two Windows rigs, OS X devices or Mac to PC while globe-trotting, the iTwin promises to easily let you get your secure share on. As it stands, the iTwin remains priced at $99, and if you need a refresher on how it works, check out the video and PR just past the break.

Continue reading iTwin’s filesharing USB gets official OS X compatibility, still plays nice with Windows too

iTwin’s filesharing USB gets official OS X compatibility, still plays nice with Windows too originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 20 Sep 2011 07:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sep 20

Belkin Cooks Up Trio of iPad Kitchen Accessories

Posted in: Accessories and Peripherals, ipad, Today's Chili

Belkin’s trio of kitchen-friendly iPad stands seem adequate

Belkin has launched a range of iPad kitchen accessories, to make cooking with your tablet a little easier and safer. That’s the idea anyway: at least one of these products looks a little dangerous.

That product is the Fridge Mount, a $40 bracket which attaches to the refrigerator door with a pair of sticky 3M Command Strips. The iPad 2 then sits on a small bottom shelf and is held at the top by its own magnets. And that’s the possibly dangerous part. The iPad’s magnets are great at holding a cover on, but I’d bet a good slam of that door could shake them loose.

The other products are the Chef Stand, weighted countertop stand with a chunky stylus for using the tablet whilst sticky-fingered ($40) and the Kitchen Cabinet Mount which clamps onto any shelf or cabinet ($50). All of these are available now, or you could just opt for the almost-free Gadget Lab ghetto version, the Ziploc-bag-and-business-card-stand.

Belkin iPad Kitchen Stands [Belkin]

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Sep 20

Ford’s E-Bike Concept Puts Car Tech On Two Wheels

Posted in: Ford, Today's Chili, Transportation

Ford tries its hand at e-bikes. What next? A Specialized SUV?

Ford is the latest car maker to turn its talents to bicycles, and this concept E-Bike is the result. Unlike most other car-branded bikes, though, this one actually brings automotive tech to the party.

The bicycle part is pretty standard, if outlandishly styled. The frame is fashioned from aluminum and carbon fiber, the wheels look like 1980s mags, the gears are internal Shimano Alfine (11-speed), the “chain” is a carbon belt and the brakes are disks.

But the electric part is way neater. The li-ion battery inside the frame drives a 350w motor in the front hub. Also inside the hub are magnetostriction sensors. These sensors, which change shape when a magnetic field is applied (and vice versa) allow the wheel to detect when it is turning and apply power appropriate to how hard you are pedaling. These sensors come from F1 cars.

The setup can be tweaked by an app on the Android phone up on the “dash.” This app also shows you all the usual bike computer info like speed and distance, along with more car-like functions like “service reminder” and “System diagnosis.” An iPhone app is planned, which makes me think that this concept may actually make it into production.

I’m not sure how I feel about car companies making bikes. On the one hand, it shows that cycling is definitely on the up. On the other, seeing a car manufacturer muscling in is like seeing a cigarette company making candy for kids — chilling.

Ford Rides into E-Bike Market with Stunning Concept [Ford PR]

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Sep 20

Magisto edits videos automagically, deluges the interwebs with idiot auteur savancy

Posted in: Today's Chili, video, videos

Oh, the plague of social media and its irrational empowerment of at-home, amateur media moguls. Well, truth be told, not everyone has the tenacity to sit and slog through hours of footage to create a skillfully made, ready-for-prime time upload. Not to worry you talentless hacks, Magisto’s got a web-based tool that’ll automate your lack of video editing expertise, and churn out YouTube-worthy, ADD-style clips replete with background music and fancy multi-window effects. The service, which makes use of an algorithm to recognize “people, pets and landscapes and can even…[analyze] sounds and images,” had formerly been available in a private beta, but is now open and free to anyone with a camera, a computer and a decent internet connection. We’ve seen the results of the company’s handiwork and it’s all pretty much the same thing — an incoherent, tune-laden mashup. Which is to say, ideal for the Twitter and Facebook IV drips we’ve come to subsist upon. Go ahead and test the hyper-editing software out at the source below — it’s not like you actually have to do anything, anyway. Just click.

Continue reading Magisto edits videos automagically, deluges the interwebs with idiot auteur savancy

Magisto edits videos automagically, deluges the interwebs with idiot auteur savancy originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 20 Sep 2011 07:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sep 20

The Camera Day Pack Is Just Big Enough

Posted in: Today's Chili

The Camera Day Pack won’t break the bank, or your back

Having just spent a week walking around cities and towns in North Africa, I can tell you a thing or two about carrying a camera in a shoulder bag. It boils down to this: Pain. I took the Gadget Lab Stealth Bag with padding removed, and even then the weight of a Panasonic GF1, a lens and a few sundries cut into my shoulder and cricked my aging back after a few hours. If only I’d had the garish plastic Camera Day Pack from Photojojo.

Big enough, but not too big. A Goldilocks among bags, if you will

The bag is designed to carry an SLR with a flash, and the main compartment can be divided into two or three sections, or left as a single big cavern for larger setups. Crucially it also has a bunch of pockets (five) scattered variously around the edges for carrying other essentials like your wallet, memory cards and phone.

The nylon bag also zips shut to keep out dust and rain (and pilfering fingers), and has a pad on the strap so you don’t suffer the same shoulder-crushing fate as I did.

Stealthy this bag is not, but it is certainly practical and comfortable looking. And at $60 it’s cheap, as photo gear goes. Available now.

The Camera Day Pack [Photojojo]

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Sep 20

VMK Way-C tablet shows off its full figure, on sale for $300 in select countries this October

Posted in: Android, gingerbread, slate, tablet, Today's Chili

We got a look at the back of the African-designed VMK tablet awhile ago, and today we got a bit more info about its pending release. The slate, now named the Way-C, is set to go on sale in October — a month later than initially expected — for $300, and we finally got a look at the front side of the thing. If you like what you see, hopefully you’re reading this in Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Gabon, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Senegal or Belgium, ’cause those are the only places you can pick one up. If not, well, the plethora of pics in the gallery below will have to suffice.

Gallery: VMK Way-C tablet shows off its full figure, on sale for $300 in select countries this October

VMK Way-C tablet shows off its full figure, on sale for $300 in select countries this October originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 20 Sep 2011 06:32:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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