Hasta La Gadget!

Stephen King is one of the world’s best-selling authors and he writes all sorts of stories typically in the horror realm. This summer, CBS will air a 13-episode miniseries based on King’s book called Under the Dome. People who prefer to watch streaming content and have a membership to Amazon Prime will be able to watch the miniseries as well.

The cool part is that Amazon will add the series to its Prime streaming service for members while the show is still airing on CBS. That means you won’t have to wait months to be able watch the series and if you miss a couple episodes, you’ll be able to catch up. This is a very interesting move for CBS since the company traditionally prefers to keep its content off-line.

AllThingsD believes that the change by CBS is because this is a short run miniseries that doesn’t have much value in syndication. I’d also bet that Amazon paid a premium for the series to get it while it’s still running on TV. The episode will be on Amazon Prime three days after they air on CBS.

If you haven’t heard of this miniseries, you can check out the video trailer below. The story centers on a small town that is suddenly and unexplainably enclosed in a dome lets no one out and no one in. The show will debut on June 24.

[via AllThingsD]

Amazon to get Stephen King miniseries while it’s still showing on CBS is written by Shane McGlaun & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

The iOS 6.1.1 update Apple released yesterday has fixed the iPhone 4S connection problem users of some European carriers were reporting, with Vodafone giving subscribers the green-light to upgrade if they hadn’t already. “Please download the latest version from Apple as soon as you can” Vodafone said in an advice statement to customers today, ZDNet reports, “as this will deal with these issues.” Vodafone UK users, among others, had complained that since updating to iOS 6.1 late last month, they’d experienced problems with calls, texts, and internet access.

3 Austria users with the iPhone 4S also encountered similar problems, and the carrier said that it and Apple were working on a fix for imminent release. That update came sooner rather than later, in fact, with Apple pushing it out OTA to iPhones yesterday.

“Apple has released a new version of its iPhone software that fixes the 3G performance issues that have been affecting users of the iPhone 4S who had installed iOS 6.1″ Vodafone said today. There are no other known features to the new version.

Where Apple is with addressing some of the companion concerns of enterprise system managers, who have complained that iOS 6.1 devices have been creating vast database logs, is unclear. That problem, believed to be connected with how Exchange calendar invitations are handled, has seen some devices spawning 50GB+ log files and forcing admins to block them from the system.

iOS 6.1.1 gets Vodafone all-clear for iPhone 4S problem is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

We’ve been tracking Willow Garage’s fortunes since 2009, so when we heard rumors that the company wasn’t long for this earth, we were concerned. Fortunately, the PR2 maker has hit back at the scuttlebutt, saying instead that the start-up is becoming a commercial entity in order to become self sustaining. With any luck, founder Steve Cousins will announce a retail version of Bakebot when he’s talking at Expand.

Filed under: Robots

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Via: CNET

Source: Willow Garage

The world of tablets is largely broken down into two categories where dominant operating systems are concerned – iOS and Android, although Microsoft did try to disrupt the dance between the two with their Microsoft Surface Pro machine that runs on Windows 8. Well, you know that with Apple’s iPad family, there are not too many models to choose from, but when you take into consideration just what Android has on offer, making a decision is highly challenging. Like, nearly impossible to make a good decision if you do not have the time to go through lengthy reviews and to do the right amount of research. Well, Ematic, one of the manufacturers who have churned out tablets for the budget minded for some time already without sacrificing on performance, has come up with their FunTab.

Just what does the Ematic FunTab deliver right out of the box? For starters, it will come preloaded with Zoodles, which is an advanced, parent monitoring platform that will help safeguard children’s online activities. Zoodles basically enables parents to pick and choose between their child’s browsing and downloading options. Heck, they can even login to Zoodles.com in order to check out all of their child’s content from an online database, now how about that? It does not matter if we are talking about drawings or video messages, or even educational, progress reports will be broken down by subjects learned, as Zoodles intends to bring both parents and children closer together.

As for the kind of hardware that you will find packed in the Ematic FunTab, we are looking at Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich running right out of the box with Kids Mode turned on, a 7” 800×480 capacitive multi-touch display, a 1.2GHz processor with an accompanying 400MHz GPU, 512MB RAM, a microSD memory card slot for expansion purposes, two cameras – one in front and another at the back, and the Ematic Kids App Mall among others. Would you fork out $99 for this puppy?

Press Release
[ Ematic FunTab adds more zest to tablet range copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

A new patent granted to Apple today by the USPTO (via AppleInsider) describes an invention called “microslot antennas,” which would integrate cellular and wireless radio antennas directly into case materials, which could both reduce the size requirements of internal elements of a device, and also make it so that there’s no evidence on a gadget’s external case of the antenna’s presence, to the naked eye at least.

If you’ve been paying attention to Apple over the past decade or so, then you can probably tell that the company likes a certain design ethic (all-aluminum case construction) that it hasn’t been able to achieve with the iPhone. From plastic backing, to glass with an antenna built into a strip along the outside of the phone, to glass “windows” top and bottom, the iPhone has always been an exception to this preferred design aesthetic, owing to the need for radio communications to flow freely.

The patent was originally filed in 2007, which likely explains why all the example drawings depict a notebook computer instead of an iPhone or portable device. But the tech, which allows micron-wide antennas (of varying lengths, depending on needs) to be built into a device housing, would be able to communicate over cellular, Wi-Fi GPS, Bluetooth and other wireless frequencies, making it ideal for use in an iPhone design. The slots cut into the case are filled with epoxy or plastic to help prevent dirt and other material from getting in, meaning they should fare just fine in a purse or pocket, too.

This tech likely isn’t as easy as it sounds to implement, since otherwise we’d have seen it used already in iPhone and iPad models released to date. The black bar on the back of iPad models with cellular connectivity, and the windows on the back of the iPhone 5 at the top and bottom stick out like sore thumbs on otherwise unbroken surfaces, even though with the iPhone Apple managed to make it mostly work in its favor. But if Apple can bring this to shipping products, it could significantly help their ability to push the envelope with design. An iPhone carved out of a single block of aluminum? Yes please.

Top image source link: iPhone Pro