Hasta La Gadget!

If you believe the good readers of Droid Life (and there’s no reason why you shouldn’t), Google has started sneaking out its Instant search option to Android phones in the USA. So far, reports include the original Motorola Droid, the Droid X, and HTC’s Droid Incredible. Lest you’ve been enjoying a lengthy holiday in the tropics, Google Instant throws up search results as you type your query, delivering either much faster results or a much more annoying search experience, depending on how you look at it. Reported operation so far aligns with our early hands-on, with Instant taking a bit of time to get its bearings, but the software is still at the beta stage, after all. Why not jump into your browser this morning and tell us if your Android’s answering your questions before you even hit the Enter key?

Google Instant showing up on some Android devices in beta form? originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 26 Oct 2010 04:37:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sure, you might have to be at Adobe’s MAX conference to actually hold a PlayBook in your hand… but RIM’s offering us all the next best thing by turning a beta version of its PlayBook simulator loose on devs way, way in advance of the tablet’s release — ostensibly in the hopes of drumming up a beefy third-party app catalog in time for retail. On that note, we’ve spent a few minutes playing with the simulator today, which is delivered in the form of an ISO that can be loaded as an operating system installer for a VMWare virtual machine on either Windows or Mac. There’s seriously very little to see here so far, but you can play with the on-screen landscape keyboard, confirm the presence of inertial scrolling in text areas, and get a quick look at how the status and app bars work. Speaking of apps, there aren’t any — not a single one — but it’s way early, and that’s obviously where RIM hopes you come into play with that million-dollar software idea of yours. Follow the break for a video walkthrough!

Continue reading BlackBerry PlayBook Simulator Beta hands-on

BlackBerry PlayBook Simulator Beta hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 25 Oct 2010 18:51:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’ve been anticipating FaceTime for the Mac ever since we spied the feature on the iPhone, and now Apple is making our dreams a reality with a handy new beta Mac OS X application dubbed “FaceTime.” It’s not an iChat replacement; far from it, in fact. Instead, the standalone, lightweight app dedicates itself to FaceTime calls only, with no sign of your handy AIM or Gtalk buddy list to help you along. It pulls its list of contacts strictly from the Mac Address Book, with no editing available in app, and you’d better hope you have a good handle on that list of contacts (our Gmail-tainted version could certainly use some work). You have to click on a person’s name and then guess which email or phone number they have associated with a FaceTime account — none of the helpful icons from the iPhone have made it over to guide you. It took quite a bit of extra-FaceTime communication to sort out what was what, but once you guess at the right bit of info to place the call with, it’s typical Apple simplicity.

From the phone side it’s intuitive enough: call the email address associated with an Apple ID and you get the computer, call the phone number and you get the iPhone. Conveniently, your computer will “ring” even if the app is closed, though you can turn this feature off in System Preferences if it unsettles you. Hopefully Apple takes this “beta” moniker seriously and has some extra features to add before it releases the final version of the app. We also wouldn’t mind seeing this folded into iChat proper — why have two first party video chat methods? Either way, computer-to-phone conversations are here to stay. The payoff? The psychedelic experience of viewing four Paul Millers simultaneously.

Update: Want a special little bonus? You can apparently video chat with iChat and FaceTime simultaneously, though we tried to add Skype as a third conspirator into the mix and failed (there’s a pic of our experiment after the break). Oh, you should also know that there’s apparently no way to shut off the video in FaceTime outside of quitting the app or physically covering up the camera. EXCLUSIVE: Is Steve Jobs Watching You Sleep? More at 11.

Continue reading FaceTime for Mac hands-on: it works, it’s rough

FaceTime for Mac hands-on: it works, it’s rough originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 20 Oct 2010 15:44:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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After a healthy alpha (and pre-alpha) period, Mozilla is taking the mobile version of Firefox 4 to beta on Android and Maemo this week, promising improvements in stability, performance, and functionality. Actually, this represents a shift in branding for Maemo, where Firefox 1.1 has already been gold for some time — but odds are good you’re going to want to upgrade in any event, since this new version nets you the so-called Layers framework that aims to improve scrolling and zooming responsiveness. As you might expect, you get built-in Firefox Sync — basically making this a superset of Firefox Home — and support for HTML5. Makes that ol’ N900 look a little shinier, doesn’t it? Follow the break for Mozilla’s announcement video.

Continue reading Firefox 4 for mobile goes beta on Android and Maemo

Firefox 4 for mobile goes beta on Android and Maemo originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 07 Oct 2010 21:40:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s been forever and a day since Amazon first offered its users access to the opening few pages of a book on its web store, but now that feature is being codified under the Kindle umbrella as a new Kindle for the Web service. It’ll allow external sites to embed book samples right into their content stream, while users get a new Share button for spreading the good word about Chuck Palahniuk’s visionary writing across their social networks. Font sizes, line spacing, and even background color are adjustable too. Hit up the source link to try it out for yourself.

Continue reading Kindle for the Web overhauls Amazon’s online book previews, adds sharing and embedding features

Kindle for the Web overhauls Amazon’s online book previews, adds sharing and embedding features originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 28 Sep 2010 08:44:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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