Chipworks throws an iPhone 4S under its infrared microscope, finds Sony-sourced image sensor

Look closely. Can you spot it? That gray abyss is actually an infrared image by Chipworks revealing an iPhone 4S‘ Sony-branded, 8 megapixel CMOS sensor. Looks like Howard Stringer wasn’t bluffing to Walt Mossberg back in April, after all. At the time, it was reported that Apple’s usual sensor supplier, OmniVision, was experiencing production delays, prompting speculation that Sony would eventually usurp the position. While the iPhone 4S that Chipworks looked into seems to confirm this, it’s pointed out that Apple does have a habit of “dual sourcing” components (with its contacts saying this should be no different), so Sony may not be the sole supplier this time around. What ever the case, there’s no denying that the iPhone 4S takes some stellar shots. You’ll find more information — including X-rays of the 4S — at the source link below.

Continue reading Chipworks throws an iPhone 4S under its infrared microscope, finds Sony-sourced image sensor

Chipworks throws an iPhone 4S under its infrared microscope, finds Sony-sourced image sensor originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 16 Oct 2011 17:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Fast Forward Your YouTube Videos!

This article was written on August 16, 2007 by CyberNet.

Watching videos on YouTube just got a little easier, especially for those who want to skip to a certain part of a video. A new feature allows you to to click anywhere on the player bar and the video will start buffering from the location that you choose. There’s no more waiting for the entire video to load! The screenshot below shows that I clicked at 1:43 into the video, and that’s where the video started buffering.

Youtube fast forward

The days of waiting for the entire video to load before you can show your friends the best part are over. Google Video added a feature like this back last July, but their feature also allowed you to link to a specific time in a movie. Given that YouTube is now owned by Google, I’m surprised it’s taken them as long as it has to add the feature, and that they also didn’t include the option to link to a specific time.

Source: Digital Inspiration

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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CyberNotes: Vista Does Time Machine… Better

This article was written on January 21, 2008 by CyberNet.

CyberNotes
Microsoft Monday

Apple touts their Time Machine feature in OS X as a breakthrough automatic backup system, but they’re not the only ones that offer such a thing.  Believe it or not, Windows Vista has a feature that is much like Time Machine, except I’d like to think that it’s better. I’ll explain…

–Apple’s Time Machine Defined–

Since we are going to be explaining how Vista can do exactly what Time Machine can, I thought we should start by explaining what Time Machine is for those of you who are unfamiliar.  Apple defines it as:

Time Machine is the breakthrough automatic backup that’s built right into Mac OS X. It keeps an up-to-date copy of everything on your Mac — digital photos, music, movies, TV shows, and documents. Now, if you ever have the need, you can easily go back in time to recover anything.

The big downside here is that you have to have an external drive connected to your Mac to be able to use this feature.  Once you have the external drive connected, it will do it automatically for you.

Vista’s Previous Versions Feature

We’ve mentioned little known features in Vista before before, and there are several. One of them is “Previous Versions” which essentially does what Time Machine does on a Mac except you don’t need an external hard drive connected. That’s what makes it great! The only thing it’s missing is a snazzy interface.  It’s a bare-bones feature, and creating a easy-on-the-eyes interface clearly wasn’t a top priority for Microsoft like it was for Apple. Additionally, keep in mind that this feature is available only in Ultimate, Business, and Enterprise versions of Vista.

Previous Versions are accessed by right clicking on any document or folder (yes, even whole folders are backed-up) and then clicking on “Restore Previous Versions.”  Previous versions come from shadow copies, which are saved automatically to your hard drive. If you need a refresher on what a shadow copy is, reference this article.

A list of archived copies will be displayed in the “Previous Versions” tab, and they’re all sorted by date. Remember, these were all done automatically — without the need of an external drive. Retrieving the archived copies is simple, and you have a few different options for doing so. They include:

  • Copy – copy the entire folder and paste it on your desktop or wherever else you’d like to
  • Browse – Open the folder to see what’s in it
  • Restore – This will replace any existing copy that you have on your computer.

This feature is perfect for any files or folders you may have accidentally deleted or changed. Below you’ll see a screenshot of the “Previous Versions” tab for a folder on my computer containing music from the B-52′s:

previous versions

Backup and Restore Center

While the Previous Versions feature is great, there are other options included with Vista that will help you keep backup files and restore them if necessary.  To access the Backup and Restore Center, click on the start menu and type “Backup and Restore Center” into the search box and hit enter.

Depending on the version of Vista that you have, you can do various things in the Backup and Restore Center.  One of the nicest features is the option to “Back up files.” Like Time Machine, this does require an external drive of some sort whether it be a hard drive, USB drive, or an optical drive. Clicking on it will pull up a box where you can choose which files types you want to backup.  The screenshot below shows you what this looks like:

Backup File Types

Once you select the types of files you want backed-up, you can decide how often you want a backup created as shown below:

Backup Schedule

For those of you running Business, Ultimate, or Enterprise editions, you can do the following:

  • Windows Complete PC Backup and Restore – this is a comprehensive, image-based backup tool that will “help you out of a tight spot if you need to recover your entire system.” It can be accessed from inside Windows Vista- or even from the Windows Vista installation CD should your computer have issues with starting up normally

Wrapping it up

To me, the Previous Versions Feature is something that Microsoft should have offered with Vista Home Premium.  Because they don’t offer it with Home Premium, they should at least talk it up as an incentive for buying Ultimate because it’s a great feature to have.  What I like about it best is that you do not need an external hard drive connected (like Apple’s Time Machine) to make use of it.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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RIM tells devs to get ready for BlackBerry Curve Touch and Bellagio

If you’re going to give your devs a nugget of info about some of your unannounced devices on a publicly available site, we hope you won’t be so surprised that word actually gets out about them. That’s exactly what happened to Research in Motion, as the company let it “slip out” to devs that two future BlackBerry OS7 smartphones — the Bellagio 9790 and Curve Touch 9380 — are inbound. The whole point in the message was to inform developers of what kind of resolution to expect in the new phones’ displays. From the bits and pieces we’re given, it appears that the Bellagio will have a 2.4-inch screen using 480 x 360 resolution to produce a respectable 245 PPI; the Curve Touch, on the other hand, will feature an identical res on a larger 3.2-inch display, resulting in a PPI of 189. The probability of hearing an official announcement this week is pretty high, but we’d say the intended (and likely unintended) message has come through loud and clear for now, wouldn’t you?

RIM tells devs to get ready for BlackBerry Curve Touch and Bellagio originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 16 Oct 2011 14:54:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sprint buyback ad deems HTC Arrive too old, iPhone page lightly suggests you chuck it (update: official response)

Ready to trade in that phone you just got? Sprint thinks you are, teasing you from its iPhone landing page to “go green and get green” by recycling your probably still in-contract HTC Arrive. Sure, its $73 buyback kickback might help you subsidize something fresher, but you aren’t tired of Metro already, are you?

Update: We just received word from Sprint, mentioning that the HTC Arrive was chosen at random and that no actual connection exists between it and the BuyBack program.

Sprint buyback ad deems HTC Arrive too old, iPhone page lightly suggests you chuck it (update: official response) originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 16 Oct 2011 13:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Windows Live Writer Beta 2: New Inline Spell Checking & Tables

This article was written on May 30, 2007 by CyberNet.

Windows Live WriterThe Windows Live Writer team just posted the Beta 2 which is now available for you to download. It has a handsome list of new features, but nothing I hadn’t really seen in a blog editor before:

  • Inline spell checking
  • Table editing
  • Ability to add categories
  • Page authoring for WordPress and TypePad
  • Support for excerpts and extended entries
  • Improved hyperlinking and image insertion
  • Paste Special
  • Automatic synchronization of local and online edits
  • Integration with Windows Live Gallery
  • Support for Blogger Labels
  • New look and feel
  • Available in 6 languages
  • Improved accessibility and keyboard support

My first impression of the new Live Writer was…wow! It looks amazing, and if appearance counts for anything it blows the other blog editors out of the water. It is sharp, sophisticated, and most of all, usable.

Windows Live Writer
Click to Enlarge

The inline spell checking and table manager are awesome features that will surely come in handy. Unfortunately it still doesn’t appear to support the XHTML standards, but I’m sure many of the Live Writer users don’t know what that is.

I played with it a little more, and two things I thought you might like to see is the appearance of the right-click menu for the spell checker, and what you can actually do with the tables. Here are two screenshots that will sum that up well:

Windows Live Writer Windows Live Writer

When creating the table, it asks you for all of the basic information just as if you were creating it in a word processor:

Windows Live Writer

As you can see there are a lot of great things available with the new Live Writer, and you should consider giving it a shot. Personally, I’m a huge fan of Post2Blog which coincidentally turned to freeware the other day. It is a great application that has a ton of features, but I would have to say that Live Writer looks better and is a little simpler to use.

So what’s it missing? Despite Live Writer supporting plug-ins, I still think there are some things that should be built-in. Some of these things might be available via a plug-in, but this is what I would like to see Live Writer shipped with:

  • XHTML standards compliance
  • Table options (a.k.a. the stuff from the Table Menu) should open in the sidebar like they do when you click on an image.
  • Customize the order of the categories (I don’t know of any blogging software that does this though).
  • Enable Auto-saving by default. I don’t know who wouldn’t like the assurance that their documents are constantly being saved?
  • Align buttons! If I want to center some text, I shouldn’t be going to the Format -> Align menu. That takes way to long. There should be buttons to do this. Also, what about the shortcut keys for aligning things, such as Ctrl+E for centering?
  • I’m not sure about this one, but maybe make the sidebar expand/contract when you hover over it? That way it saves space and is still extremely easy to get to.
  • I would like to create snippets as well. That way some of the repetitive things aren’t so…well, repetitive. This is great for people who guest blog and always conclude each post with a short summary of who they are.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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IE8 InPrivate Browsing to Include Ad-Blocking Capabilities?

This article was written on August 26, 2008 by CyberNet.

ie8 inprivate.pngMicrosoft will be addressing a lot of privacy issues in Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2, which will be released to the public soon. The new version of the browser will include a private browsing mode called InPrivate, and when it’s enabled cookies aren’t stored, history isn’t recorded, and a lot of your other data is never saved. For people who work on public computers this kind of feature can offer a little piece of mind.

One other handy feature that will be included is the ability to clear out all of your history, passwords, cookies, and more for all websites except those located in your favorites. That means clearing out all of your cookies won’t cause you to have to login again to the sites that reside in your bookmarks.

The last thing that I wanted to point out is a feature they’re calling InPrivate Subscriptions. Here’s how the IE8 team describes this feature:

Under the covers, InPrivate Subscriptions are simply RSS feeds of Regular Expressions that specify sub-downloads to block or allow. Anyone can publish an InPrivate Subscription on their website, just as they can offer an Accelerator or Web Slice on their website.

Essentially with InPrivate Subscriptions users will be able to subscribe to lists of sites that should be blocked. Anyone can create their own list, and then publish it on their own site to share with the world. Content including images, scripts, and CSS files can all be blocked using InPrivate Subscriptions. While it may not be the intended use I’m sure there will be plenty of these subscriptions created to block advertisements from around the web.

ie 8 inprivate subscriptions.png

So what do you think? Is Internet Explorer 8 shaping up to be a great browser? Here’s a rather lengthy interview (38 minutes) with some of the managers from the Internet Explorer team outlining how some of the new features will work.

[via IE8 Blog] Thanks Claus!

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Socially Given: Blogging For Charity

This article was written on December 19, 2006 by CyberNet.

It’s that giving time of year when people feel driven to make a difference and help out those in need.  Two people have decided to start an experiment that’s all about blogging and using earned revenue from pledges and advertisements to donate to charity. The site, Socially Given was started by Steve Searer and Muhammed Saleem who both label themselves as social bookmarkers and writers. They’re hoping that the submitted content will be quality enough to attract enough attention that it will be promoted on sites such as Digg. This of course will result in additional revenue that will be put towards charity.

They’re looking for guest writers who are willing to contribute to the site, and one of our own readers, Curtiss Thompson, has already volunteered. One of my first thoughts was charity? Which charity? There are so many different organizations that you could potentially donate to, how do you pick which one? They mention that as the site is developed, they hope to involve the community in determining where they’d like the money donated to, which sounds like a great idea.  They also plan to post revenue statistics, and receipts from the different organizations that they donate to as proof on their contribution.

This sounds like a great way for people to contribute and help out those in need.  If you like to write, and/or you’d like to contribute to the site, head on over to http://sociallygiven.com/blog and let them know to count you in! You can also visit Digg to promote their site.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Pointing a laser at a police helicopter is a very bad idea

Laser pointers seem to get more popular the brighter they get. A good example is the latest product from Wicked Lasers called the S3 Krypton that is 8,000 times brighter than the sun and has a range of 85 miles. The question I always have to ask is what use are they on a daily […]

Sirius XM Lynx receiver leaks out courtesy of Best Buy

It’s since been removed, but a listing for the tidy little package you see above was on Best Buy’s website long enough this week to provide most of the details on Sirius XM’s still-unannounced Lynx satellite radio receiver. As you can see, it relies on a touchscreen interface for the most part and, even more interestingly, it apparently runs some sort of custom version of Android — although we wouldn’t recommend getting your hopes up about Android Marketplace access or the like. You’ll also get a microSD card slot to load it up with your own music, and it can be used in conjunction with your choice of a car kit, home kit or portable speaker dock (not included). Assuming nothing’s changed, you can expect this one to set you back $250, although there’s unfortunately no indication of a release date.

Sirius XM Lynx receiver leaks out courtesy of Best Buy originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 16 Oct 2011 11:52:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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