It would appear that the electric Tesla Model S has come up in California as a vehicle that’s not only striking the technology headlines, but the high-rolling sales market as well. According to a recent California New Car Dealers Association report for the first part of 2013, new-vehicle registrations have marked up the Tesla Model […]
Feedly gained a lot of traction after the demise of Google Reader earlier this year. It has turned out to be one of the most widely used RSS readers ever since Google started to sunset its iconic service. Feedly recently announced the Pro subscription model which costs $5 per month. It was announced today that Feedly Pro is now live for everyone. Those who are interested can sign up now for either $5 per month or $45 for an entire year. Subscribers will get access to the first batch of Pro features.
Right now the Pro features batch include the ability to search within feeds, integration with Evernote and HTTPS support for an additional layer of security. Subscribers also get premium support which means that their queries will be dealt with on a priority basis. Feedly says that it will continue to add more features for Pro users regularly. The company says that this subscription model will make it more sustainable in the long run and will lead to more “innovation” for both standard and Pro users. They’ve also listened to user feedback and brought HTTPS support along with one-click Pocket integration to Feedly standard. More information about subscription to Pro is available on Feedly’s website.
Feedly Pro Goes Live For Everyone original content from Ubergizmo. 
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America got a little bit smaller on the night of February 8, 1924. Or at least it felt that way. From a banquet hall at the Congress Hotel in Chicago one man could be heard simultaneously in New York, Jacksonville, Denver, San Francisco, and even Havana, Cuba (which was no longer technically controlled by the U.S. but was certainly a playground for American corporations at the time). This was the first coast-to-coast radio broadcast and it was accomplished less than a decade after the first coast-to-coast telephone call was placed in 1915. The future of broadcasting had arrived.
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Apple is rumored to launch an iPhone trade-in program at its retail stores next month. Under this program, customers will be able to trade-in their old iPhone for a new model at a discount. For example, a customer may bring in their iPhone 4S and trade it in for an iPhone 5, and end up saving some money in the process. Carriers and retailers already run their own programs for the iPhone, this particular program would run across Apple’s brick and mortar stores.
It was reported recently that Apple CEO Tim Cook had held a meeting to discuss potential ways of increasing iPhone sales through the company’s own retail channel. At the meeting he reportedly revealed that 80 percent of the iPhones that Apple sells are not through its own stores. The trade-in program is said to be one major component of Cook’s plan to boost iPhone sales at Apple’s stores. The company will reportedly start training retail employees for the program throughout this week, training has to complete before the first week of September, it is said. Apple is yet to confirm that it is going to kick off an iPhone trade-in program right around the time when it is expected to launch two new iPhones.
Apple’s iPhone Trade-In Program May Launch Next Month original content from Ubergizmo. 
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With every new iPhone, most of the discussion centers around its look and not what comes inside. But, according to reports, Apple has designed a new dual-core A7 system on a chip for the iPhone 5S. If rumors are true, the A7 could supposedly be 31 percent faster, representing a serious slowdown in spec improvement. It could indicate that the smartphone market may have matured and that existing smartphone owners won’t feel the urge to upgrade to a new model anymore.
When it comes to smartphone chips, Apple is a lone ranger. It has been designing its own ARM-based chips for a couple of years. It outsources production to Samsung and other manufacturers. But the important part is that only Apple devices use Apple chips. So far, this strategy has proven to be successful.
The iPhone 4S was twice as powerful as the iPhone 4, and had nine times the graphics processing capabilities. The iPhone 5 was once again twice as fast as the iPhone 4S, with twice the graphics performance. That’s why this year’s 31 percent performance boost is lackluster, it it turns out to be true. If the new iPhone is indeed called the iPhone 5S, the ‘S’ will probably not stand for ‘speed’.
A 31% CPU speed increase sounds like a huge failure to me, specially considering previous generations showed ~100% improvements.—
Paul Haddad (@tapbot_paul) August 26, 2013
On paper, Android phones are more powerful. Right now, the Snapdragon 800 and Tegra 4 both come with at least 4 cores and more raw power. But Apple doesn’t want to compete in the spec game.
The main advantage is that Apple can optimize the A7 for its own set of APIs, making it feel faster than it actually is. Even though Snapdragons have more GHz, iPhone apps are still fast because Apple takes advantage of its chip architecture like no one else. That’s why the gap isn’t as wide as expected. Moreover, Apple’s custom design strategy improves battery performance.
Yet, why were the A6 and the A5 much faster than their predecessors? Because smartphones were not as fast as Apple wanted them to be. If you want to use Siri or play nice games, you need the iPhone 4S. If you want to use the upcoming AirDrop feature, you need the iPhone 5. Today’s rumors could tell another story. Apple could think that the iPhone 5 can run everything perfectly fine, and there is no need to put more raw power. In other words, smartphones could have matured.
As smartphones get more widespread, Apple needs to reduce both component costs and R&D costs. The company can’t invest as much money in developing its new chips if smartphones become more and more commoditized products. The company wants to avoid hurting its margin more than it needs.
The A7 needs to be future-proof. While the iPhone 5C will not receive the A7 at first, entry-level iPhones will eventually get those rumored chips. It needs to be powerful enough and cheap enough so that Apple doesn’t have to develop yet another chip next year for its cheap iPhones.
If Apple judges that current chips are becoming fast enough to power iOS for years, iPhone users shouldn’t expect speed increases. Instead, the company will bet on new features and software updates. With market maturation coming soon, Apple faces a difficult challenge as well. How do you convince your customers to upgrade their phones?
The same thing happened for the iPod — they got lighter and lighter. In 2001, the original 5GB iPod was 6.5 ounces (184 grams). In 2004, the iPod mini was 3.6 ounces (102 grams). In 2005, the iPod nano was only 1.5 oz (42 grams). At this point, if you already had an iPod and used it as a portable music player, there was no real incentive to upgrade to a new one, except more gigabytes. The same thing is true for your microwave — you only buy a new one if your old one breaks.
Yet, there is one last thing that can be improved again and again on the iPhone — the camera. Everybody uses their phone as their primary camera. It’s the camera that you always have in your pocket. While it has greatly improved over the years, there’s still room for improvement — especially now that HiDPI displays are getting more popular. This single spec upgrade will make people upgrade.
That’s why the most interesting news of the day isn’t the A7 rumors, but the new dedicated chip for video capturing rumors. In addition to helping for image stabilization, it could allow you to take 120 fps videos.
If the iPhone 5S can shoot smooth slow-motion videos, it could be the feature that stands out and steals the show at Apple’s event. In fact, the ‘S’ could stand for ‘slow motion’.
The article was slightly edited to reflect the fact that the A7 specs are still unconfirmed.
(Image credits: Ascii.jp, Wikimedia Commons)
We hope you aren’t depending on your Chromecast for local media playback. If you are, the device has just become a paperweight — temporarily, at least. Google’s most recent Chromecast update disables playback from external video sources, breaking third-party apps like AllCast and Fling that use the code for local-only streaming. Developer Leon Nicholls is hopeful that functionality will return when the official Cast SDK is ready for public apps, although we wouldn’t count on it. As Android Central notes, Google isn’t promising local media support on the Chromecast; for now, it’s focused on the cloud.
Update: In a statement mentioned by dnengel84 in the comments and posted by The Verge, Google says that it’s willing to support local content; these are “early days” for the SDK, and the feature set is likely to change. Read the full statement after the break.
Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD, Google
Via: GigaOM
I bet Jabba the Hutt is kicking himself right about now for failing in his diet. There is no way he could get this awesome Han Solo in Carbonite ring on even his little finger. I guess he could have one of his slaves wear it for him.
This ring displays a miniature Han Solo frozen in carbonite – one of the most classic moments in movie or sci-fi history. This is a design that was sketched out by Paul Bierker, a jeweler who is obviously a geek as well. I know this because he also made this.
It’s the perfect engagement ring for any Hutt who is in love and also wants to keep his trophies close by.
[via Superpunch]
What did you think of the movie “Ted”? I know that some parents actually thought that this was a movie that they could treat their little ones to, only to find out that the teddy bear is nothing like what they originally envisaged, being foul mouthed and all. Well, what you see above is a giant leap not only for mankind, but for teddy bears all over the world – especially when Babbage the bear is Raspberry Pi-powered.
This particular Babbage teddy bear has managed to recreate Felix Baumgartner’s record-breaking skydive, where Mr. Baumgartner performed the highest ever freefall in October last year as he jumped from a balloon about 39km up in the sky. A teddy bear known as Babbage has replicated this attempt from a similar height, all after making its way to the heaves via a hydrogen-filled balloon. Sporting the Raspberry Pi computer within, Babbage has managed to transmit his position as well as stills and video of his flight and descent. This is definitely the start of many other potential projects, don’t you think so? Most importantly, it does not require humans to risk life and limb in order to bring such an adrenaline pumping experience to the masses.
Babbage Pi-Powered Teddy Bear Takes To The Skies original content from Ubergizmo. 
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With the Atlantic hurricane season about to kick into gear, plenty are wondering how this year’s crop of storms with disarmingly mundane names will compare to last year’s nightmarish season. This map goes even further, showing the past 170 hurricane seasons. It’s beautiful and humbling, all at once.
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So, you think that you have seen all there is to it about tattoos, barring someone doing something stupid with theirs? Well, here is a tattoo that your mom would probably like – simply because it is a tattoo that cannot be seen by the naked eye, meaning it is like those secret messages of old, where you craft them out using lime or lemon juice only to read them near a source of light and heat such as a candle, except that this particular tattoo will not rely on lime juice, but rather, require a tiny RFID chip to be implanted within the body. This would allow only a compatible smartphone to be able to “read” this RFID tattoo.
Anthony Antonellis is the person with an embedded RFID chip within his hand, where the chip itself is carefully stashed away into a glass capsule, sporting 1KB of storage space and remains completely invisible to the naked eye. Just what kind of tattoos do you think would rank right up there with the coolest of them, except that your particular choice would come with a slant of technology thrown into the mix? Unfortunately, I’d hate the thought of having something sewn within, how about you?
Tattoo Visible To Smartphones original content from Ubergizmo. 
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