I like Halloween but I’m nothing like these three guys from Fairhaven, Massachusetts. They live and inhale everything All Hallow’s Eve and their decorations are ridiculously insane, in a good way. Check them out in the trailer above for The American Scream, a movie about what the three guys go through to decorate Halloween. More »
Want to do something about pollution in our water and air? Carnegie Mellon’s CREATE Lab is working on a few interesting solutions to the problem of localizing pollution data with a trio of devices aimed at making the process accessible and affordable for regular people. First up is AirBot, a “particle counting robot” that monitors pollutants that can contribute to breathing problems like asthma. Aimed at a $99 price point, the little black boxes are portable enough to bring around with you, so you can, say, compare the air quality in areas when apartment hunting. The lab has made six prototype devices (one of which was on-hand during our visit), and is aiming to bring them to market next year.
WaterBot, meanwhile, is set to bring the solution to streams near you. Stick one end in a body of water near your home and it will upload water purity information to the web via a built-in ZigBee module. CREATE’s also cooked up the CATTFish, a method for recording such information in your home via, yes, your toilet. Dip one end in the reservoir and the box on top of the tank, and it will give you a reading of the cleanliness of the water being used to refill. That information can then be uploaded to the web via a USB port. The lab is shooting for a $50 price tag on the device.
The big thing here is the ability to let the community take its own readings to build a bigger picture of water and are purity levels through online applications. More information on all of the above devices can be found in the video below.
Continue reading AirBot and WaterBot help localize pollution data collection (video)
AirBot and WaterBot help localize pollution data collection (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 25 Oct 2012 22:17:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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This is the oldest recording of an American voice and the first-ever recording of a musical performance. Recorded by a Thomas Edison-invented phonograph in 1878, the audio recording (which lasts 78 seconds) is pretty much “as far back as we can go” in terms of the history of recorded sound. More »
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act was passed in 1998, well before issues like jailbreaking arose. As part of the DMCA, exemptions can be passed as necessary, the latest round of which were announced earlier today. Included in the exemptions is the permissibility of jailbreaking smartphones, but not tablets.
The new exemptions take effect on October 28 and are valid for the next three years. Five types of circumvention are addressed by the exemptions, most of which present the kind of head-scratching stipulations and arbitrariness that make you wonder who is coming up with this stuff. One of the most obvious bits of oddness is the exemption making it legal to unlock smartphones purchased before 2013, but not phones purchased after.
Concerning the legality of jailbreaking: while unlocking smartphones is legal, performing the same actions with a tablet is not. The reason? The definition of “tablet” is too broad at the moment. According to the ruling, “…an e-book reading device might be considered a ‘tablet,’ as might a handheld video game device or a laptop computer.” It was ruled that there is insufficient basis for developing a definition for tablets, which is necessary in order to apply the jailbreaking exemption currently given to smartphones.
Next up is the issue of circumventing ebooks, which is permissible for disability access. The exemption concerns “literary works, distributed electronically, that are protected by technological measures which either prevent the enabling of read-aloud functionality or interfere with screen readers or other applications or assistive technologies.” This is an expansion on the 2010 exemption that only permitted circumvention if every available ebook edition contained access controls.
The issue of unlocking just took a step backwards, sadly. The latest exemption removes the previously instituted permission to unlock a phone for use with a new carrier. This change makes it so that only phones originally “acquired from the operator of a wireless telecommunications network or retailer no later than ninety days after the effective date of this exemption” can be unlocked.
Finally, the exemption on ripping DVDs makes the activity permissible for the purpose of using parts of the film in a documentary, noncommercial video, in non-fiction multimedia ebooks offering film analysis, and for educational use by college students and faculty and k-12 teachers in courses requiring the study of film and media excerpts. Decryption is also permissible for disability access, with individuals being permitted “to access the playhead and/or related time code information embedded in copies of such works and solely for the purpose of conducting research and development for the…blind, visually impaired, deaf, or hard of hearing….” Sadly, it’s still not permissible to “space-shift,” meaning that ripping a DVD on your computer so that you can watch it on your iPhone, for example, is not considered fair use.
[via Ars Technica]
DMCA exemption makes jailbreaking smartphones legal, but not tablets is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Whether you’re an existing or prospecting Sprint customer, the carrier’s new big thing is now on sale. Priced at a whopping $300 with a two-year service agreement, the Samsung Galaxy Note II is the biggest smartphone to hit Sprint since the Hitachi G1000. As a reminder, the Now Network’s Note II features an unbranded home button, a 5.5-inch 1,280 x 720 HD Super AMOLED display, a 1.6GHz quad-core Exynos processor, an 8-megapixel rear-facing camera, a 1.9-megapixel front-facing shooter, Android 4.1 and international voice and data compatibility with GSM / UMTS / CDMA networks. If the aforementioned sounds pleasing to your mobile palate, then the only thing left to decide is marble white or titanium gray?
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Sprint
Samsung Galaxy Note II now available from Sprint for $300 on a two-year contract originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 25 Oct 2012 21:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Bogomil Shopov, a Bulgarian blogger and digital rights activist, bought 1.1 million Facebook names, user IDs and e-mails for the ridiculously low price of 5 dollars. Yes, for a price of a Subway footlong, Shopov was able to get his hands on your personal data from Facebook. What a deal! More »
Welcome to Thursday evening folks. Today was Microsoft’s big Windows 8 launch event, and though we didn’t find out many new details, the company did share a few interesting tidbits of information. For instance, did you know that there are more than 1,000 Windows 8 certified PCs now? How about the fact that Microsoft has sold a whopping 670 million Windows 7 licenses? Microsoft also told us that the Windows Store will be available in 231 markets, and that Windows RT is supported by more than 420 million devices. Impressive numbers to be sure, but it’s important to remember why we were at this show in the first place: Windows 8 launches in just a few hours, so get ready for that.
Today we had two massive companies deliver quarterly reports – Apple is looking pretty good despite a few under-performing sectors, but Amazon posted an operating loss of $28 million. Earlier in the day we heard that the LG Nexus 4 has a release date of October 30, and then more evidence of the rumored Nexus 10 surfaced in the form of a (supposed) quick start guide. iFixit gave the new 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display the teardown treatment today, while we heard whispers that Apple will launch a new online music service in 2013.
EE confirmed today that it will be offering the iPad mini and the iPad 4, and Nokia was seen touting its NAVTEQ True technology today. Nintendo revealed that it will be selling the Wii U at a loss, and we learned that T-Mobile’s Galaxy Note II has hardware support for LTE. Microsoft has turned Times Square into its own Windows 8 advertising space this evening, just in case you forgot that Windows 8 and Microsoft Surface are launching tomorrow.
Speaking of that launch, Microsoft laid out upgrade options for Windows 8 today, and told us that once we experience the glory of touch, we’ll want it on everything. Today Ubisoft told the world that Assassin’s Creed III is its most pre-ordered game ever (since Assassin’s Creed: Revelations at least), and we caught wind that the rumored Nexus 7 3G cleared the FCC. The Sony Xperia TL will be hitting AT&T on November 2, and finally tonight, the iPad Mini goes up for pre-order tomorrow, so be sure to get those in quickly if you want to get one at launch. That does it for tonight’s evening wrap-up, enjoy the rest of your night everyone!
SlashGear Evening Wrap-Up: October 25, 2012 is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
In a hilarious prank that shows how the Apple advertising machine works on people who don’t live and breath technology, Jimmy Kimmel showed people an iPod Touch and told them it was the new iPad Mini. What did people say? You guessed it! Ooh, smaller, lighter, brighter and better! More »
Three months can make all the difference, at least if you’re drafting estimates at Strategy Analytics. Now that we know 14 million iPads shipped in the third quarter, the analyst group believes that Apple’s tablet market share dropped from 68.3 percent in the spring to 56.7 percent in the summer. All of the shift is attributed to Android — researchers think that shipments of Google-based tablets surged from 7.3 million to 10.2 million, handing the platform 41 percent of an increasingly crowded space. It’s the “collective weight” of so many Android-reliant companies leaping into the market rather than any one of them pulling ahead, Strategy Analytics says. We wouldn’t be shocked if a few Kindle Fire HD sales played a part.
More than a few wildcards still surround the figures and their long-term impact. First is that these are estimates, not concrete results: companies like Amazon steadfastly refuse to provide shipment numbers and leave most of the final tally beyond Apple to educated guesswork. It’s also an understatement to say that the market will change dramatically before 2012 is over. Between Windows 8‘s launch, possible Nexus 7 upgrades and two new iPads, there are a lot of pieces moving on the chessboard.
Filed under: Tablets, Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon
Strategy Analytics claims Android reached 41 percent of tablets in Q3, iPad may have felt the heat originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 25 Oct 2012 20:38:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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In 2010, Steve Jobs minced no words as he expressed his distaste for 7-inch tablets, stating that the size is useless unless users sand their fingers down to a quarter of their size. The iPad’s competition was DOA, he said. Now Apple’s introduced its 7.9-inch iPad mini, and some consumers are pointing fingers.
Apple CEO Tim Cook took a moment during the company’s earning call to address the criticism, stating that Apple would not make “one of the seven inch tablets.” According to Cook, the 7.9-inch iPad mini is in an altogether different league than its competition. “[The iPad mini] is not a compromised product like the seven inch tablets.”
At its event on October 23, Apple revealed the iPad mini, which is 23% smaller than the 4th Generation iPad. The not-quite-a-7-incher tablet has a 7.2mm body, and weighs .68lbs. The display has a 1,024 x 768 resolution, which is the same as the iPad 2, allowing users to run iPad 2 apps on the mini without issue. The gadget has a 5MP rear camera and FaceTime HD front camera.
During the announcement, Apple gave a fairly thorough comparison between the iPad mini and Google’s Nexus 7. One of the differences that Cook reiterated during the call was the size difference between the two aforementioned tablets, with the iPad mini offering 35-percent more real estate than the Nexus 7. Apparently .9-inches means the difference between usability and needing to sandpaper one’s own fingers.
Said Cook:
The comments that I think you’re referencing are comments that Steve had made before about seven inch tablets. And, let me be clear, we would not make one of the seven inch tablets. We don’t think they’re good products, and we would never make one. Not just because it’s seven inches, but for many reasons. One of the reasons, however, is size.
I’m not sure if you saw our keynote, but the difference between just the real estate size between the 7.9… versus 7 is 35 percent. And when you look at the usable area it’s much greater than that… The iPad mini is a fantastic product. It is not a compromised product like the seven inch tablets. It’s in a whole different league.
[via The Verge]
Tim Cook says iPad mini is in a different league than 7-inch tablets is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
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