Hasta La Gadget!

We’ve seen connected light bulbs before, some more sophisticated than others, but they’re rarely as straightforward as GreenWave Reality’s just-shipping Connected Lighting Solution. Eco-friendly LED bulbs in the lineup include their own WiFi and are immediately controllable from a smartphone or tablet as soon as they’re receiving power. Basics controls like group presets and timed lighting are just the start; if you’re not worried about leaving anyone in the dark, the bulbs can respond to motion sensors and only illuminate the rooms that need attention. And while the intelligence isn’t new in itself, GreenWave would argue that sheer accessibility gives it an edge, with electric utilities in Denmark, the Netherlands and Sweden skipping the retail middleman by selling directly. Don’t despair if you live in the US: the linked-up lighting is cleared for eventual use by Americans who’d like to save both energy and a trip to the light switch.

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GreenWave Reality ships WiFi light bulbs that flick on through motion and smartphones originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 22 Oct 2012 08:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Island of Dr. Moreau-style splicing of technologies is generally one trend the world could do without. “Haven’t you always wanted a lava lamp with a built-in hatchet?” No, Mr. Pitchman, and please take your abominations elsewhere. More »

Apple executives will put the spotlight on the iPad’s educational value tomorrow at its planned San Jose event, according to a new Bloomberg Businessweek report. The report cites “a person with knowledge of the planning” of the event as the source, but doesn’t go into further detail about how specifically they’ll be promoting it from an educational perspective. But if Apple’s introducing a lower-cost iPad mini as expected, the benefits in terms of institutional purchases are obvious.

At a reported starting price of around $329, the iPad mini would be a full $170 cheaper than the latest iPad, and $70 cheaper than the current selling price of the iPad 2. That’s bound to attract interest from educators, given that iPads are already being adopted by many school districts in the U.S., both in pilot programs and in full-scale deployment, as in the San Diego Unified School District, which is deploying around 26,000 iPads to students this year.

Apple has also been pushing education initiatives on the software side in the past couple of years, with dedicated iTunes U applications for instructors, teachers and students, and an iBooks publisher geared towards creating interactive, rich media-filled digital textbooks for educational use. That attention isn’t going unnoticed – back in August, IDC released a market share report regarding worldwide tablet shipments and noted that education in particular is a vertical where interest in Apple’s tablet is on the rise.

Promoting the iPad as an educational tool will likely involve not only highlighting the device’s past and current success in this area, but also making a concerted, forward-looking sales pitch as well. Others have clearly noticed that the education market is a clear area for promoting tablet growth, like Amazon, which recently added to the existing appeal of its bargain-basement Kindle Fire pricing (a souped up version of last year’s model retails for $159) with a new free Whispercast mobile device management platform that lets schools easily deploy updates and content to a whole fleet of Kindle hardware, with support for Kindle Fire Android software coming soon.

Apple has first-mover advantage, which is important with education markets, since the processes involved in making institution-wide IT procurement decisions can take quite a while to get rolling, and it’s hard to switch horses mid-race. But Amazon’s clearly playing hardball with education, which not only leads to higher device sales near-term, but also exposes whole new generations to a company’s devices early on in life. Education could be where the sparks really fly as Apple diversifies its tablet lineup, and it’ll be interesting to see how the company girds for that battle on stage at tomorrow’s event, should this report prove accurate.

Synology‘s network-attached storage devices have been turned into quad-tuner DVRs with streaming to computers, tablets, and smartphones thanks to a new DVBLink add-on. The app – when paired with up to four USB TV tuners – can be used to record TV and stream live broadcasts via DLNA, to XBMC devices, or to iOS, Android, and Windows Phone handsets with full remote control.

Satellite and various forms of digital terrestrial TV are supported, with electronic program guides that can be remotely accessed from a mobile device for setting up recordings. Alternatively, they can be navigated via the browser.

Four USB tuners have been tested with the plug-in: the DVB-S2 Stick for satellite TV (model:460e), nanoStick for DVB-T (73e, 73eSE), and nanoStick T2 (290e) for DVB-T/T2 reception. Others may well work, though they’re not necessarily certified.

Your Synology NAS will need to be running DSM 4.1 or above, too, and there’s a full list of compatible models here. Unfortunately, DVBLink isn’t a free update to Synology’s NAS range. After a 20-day trial, the package costs €25.21 ($33).

Synology NAS become quad-tuner DVRs with remote placeshifting is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

It seems Bethesda’s Skyrim has proved so popular that Rice University in Houston, Texas, has launched a one-time course based on it. Dubbed the “Scandanavian Fantasy World: Old Norse Sagas and Skyrim”, this is a one-time course that will run for one semester and is offered by the Department of English with enrollment being limited. We guess given the popularity of Skyrim, we expect that the class should be filled pretty quickly. So what exactly will students learn in this course? According to the course description: (more…)

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Dragonborn could be the next Skyrim DLC according to datamined files, Skyrim: Dawnguard PS3 delay is ‘our problem’, admits Bethesda,