Hasta La Gadget!

If you’ve been following the SpaceX mission with the Dragon capsule attaching to the International Space Station for a second time – this time with cargo – you’ll be glad to see a lovely collection of in-person photos. These photos show the SpaceX Dragon attaching to the space station with cargo in-tact and Earth making a lovely pose in the background with a giant smile for the camera. This resupply mission has thus far been a complete success and is expected to return to our planet with another payload from the station itself as well.

This mission unloaded 882 pounds of cargo with the help of Expedition 33 Commander Suni Williams and Flight Engineer Aki Hoshide. It wasn’t only work and transfers that the two astronauts uncovered in the capsule – ice cream was stashed by NASA and SpaceX before the craft took off from Earth and was also discovered today by the team. It’s a rare treat that the team will partake in, this aside the space food they’re generally set to eat – that being prepackaged food that’s able to be kept for many months at a time at room temperature.

This novelty adds to the great joy that’s been felt at the success of this mission thus far, it being the first successful supply mission ever lead to the International Space Station by a privatized group. SpaceX led a test mission earlier this year with similar results.

It’s Michael Interbartolo who shares this transfer of cargo between the Dragon capsule and the ISS – the process set to take place over the course of 18 days, with both loading and unloading occurring. The capsule will be bringing back 1,673 pounds of cargo back to Earth, quite a bit of this being material that’s taken part in studies done on the space station over the past collection of months. Have a peek at the gallery here and get pumped up about the splashdown on the 28th of October!

SpaceX ISS mission HD photos released from space is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

If 2012 was the year of the Ultrabook, 2013’s going to be remembered by the massive proliferation of laptop / tablet hybrids. One such convertible that’s just been given full marks by the FCC is ASUS’ TAICHI, an 11.6 or 13.3-inch unit that’s packing an Ivy Bridge Core i7, 4GB RAM and, most notably, a display on both sides of its lid. While there’s no official word from the company on a launch date, now that the government has given a thumbs up, it can’t be too much further out. Plausibly, a rogue Amazon listing has pegged the 11.6-inch model as costing $1,300 and arriving on October 26th, alongside Windows 8.

Filed under: Laptops, Tablets, ASUS

ASUS’ TAICHI convertible laptop hits the FCC originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 12 Oct 2012 10:38:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If you’re champing at the bit for BlackBerry OS 10 (how many of you are there?), here’s something to hold you over until it’s ready: RIM’s L-Series hardware was apparently shown off in public—whether or not that was intentional remains to be seen—and offers a glimpse at what RIM’s next slate-style phone might look like. It’s not much, but the phone appears to have 4-4.5 inch display. The video also shows the camera UI in action, along with some of those UI elements we’ve seen before. Sadly, you’ll still have to wait til next year to get your hands on it. More »

Last month, the Swiss Federal Railway service (SBB) accused Apple of copying their iconic clock design by using it in the iOS 6 Clock application. However, a few days later, we were told that the two companies would be meeting with each other to discuss ways to remedy the issue. Today, Apple has agreed to pay the SBB for use of the clock design.

The two companies have agreed upon a fair price and signed a licensing agreement. However, neither company has disclosed how much the agreement was for, but we’ll probably hear about it soon, either through an official announcement, or from an insider analyst. But we think it probably wasn’t as much as what Samsung forked over.

The iconic Swiss clock was designed in 1944 by Hans Hilfiker, who was a SBB employee himself. The clock looks practically identical to Apple‘s version in iOS 6; it has the same black dashes with the thick hour and minute hands, and the big red dot at the end of the second hand. The design also happens to be licensed to Mondaine, a Swiss watch maker. So essentially, Apple was definitely infringing and they could’ve easily went to court and lost.

However, the two companies decided to sit down with each other and fight it out like gentlemen while coming to an agreement without whining to a judge. We can’t really blame them, though. I’m sure Apple is sick of being in court (probably not, though), and the SBB most likely didn’t want to deal with a court in the first place.

[via The Verge]

Apple and the SBB agree on licensing terms for iconic clock design is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Google has begun teasing Google TV v3, the incoming update to its smart TV platform, complete with a tablet remote control app for second-screen navigation. The new video preview – which you can see after the cut – shows version 3′s voice control in action, with the Google TV remote serving as a microphone, and viewers able to ask for specific channels, apps, content searches, and genres.

Google TV v3 is apparently clever enough to know when you’re asking for a particular show, a channel it has stored, or an app, and serve up the correct result accordingly. While you’re actually watching something, you can now call up a mini-guide version of the personalized TV & Movies application, which occupies the bottom half of the screen and gives suggestions as to what you might want to switch to next.

This new mini-guide also acts as a jumping point into the various categories, and the full guide itself. Underneath each suggestion is an indicator as to how far through watching each show you are, if you’ve already started it.

Update: Looks like someone at Google posted the video early; it’s now set to private. Our screencaps show you the key features, however.

The Google Play store, meanwhile, gets pride of place on the homescreen bar, and there’s now Google TV specific content including movies and TV shows. No word on when this new third-gen version might actually start arriving on set-top boxes and in smart TVs, however.

[via Engadget]

Google TV v3 teaser: Voice search, second-screen tablet app, more is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.