Jul 27
This summer, many of you will attempt to photograph your favorite headlining band from the middle of the crowd with your smartphone’s flash in the “on” position. Stop it.
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Jul 17
Disappointed that most entry-level solid-state drives are limited in capacity, speed or both? You’ll be happy with Samsung’s newly unveiled SSD 840 EVO, then. While it’s badged as a starter model, the 2.5-inch SATA drive carries up to 1TB of storage, or twice as much as the regular SSD 840. Thanks to both 10nm-class flash memory and a multi-core MEX memory controller, the EVO range is also faster than you’d expect from the category. Depending on the model, sequential write speeds have doubled or tripled versus the original series, peaking at 520MB/s; the flagship 1TB edition can read at a similarly blistering 540MB/s. Samsung doesn’t yet have US pricing for the SSD 840 EVO line, although it expects the drives to reach “major” markets worldwide by early August, with other regions coming later.
Source: Samsung
Jul 01
May 28
Thanko – 32 LED Smartphone Flash – Earphone terminal mounted – Use a proper flash when taking pictures with your smart device; use it with the in-camera
Posted in: Today's Chili
Thanko just released the “32 LED Smartphone Flash” for smartphones and tablets. Smartphones’ flash is often not sufficient and the in-camera doesn’t have a flash, therefore, for example, when you want to take a photo of yourself it’s not easy for you to take a good photo in a dark place. However, “32 LED Smartphone Flash” will enable you to take a good photo of yourself easily.
It’s got a 3.5 mm plug built in. To start using “32 LED Smartphone Flash”, simply place it in the earphone terminal of a smartphone or tablet and turn it on. You can charge it through the USB port on a PC, etc. It is usable with any smartphone and tablet with an earphone jack. It’s adjusts to angles that you want.
Price: 1,980 yen (including tax)
Size: 60 x 13 x 77mm
Weight: 34g
May 22
While single-chip SSDs are clearly known quantities, they usually run at a much more leisurely pace than their larger counterparts. Innodisk doesn’t think size and speed have to be contradictory — it just unveiled an embedded version of its nanoSSD that performs almost as well as its much bigger counterparts. The µSSD-based SATA chip has a tiny footprint (0.63 x 0.79 inches) and draws just 1W of peak power, but can still read at up to 480MB/s and write at 175MB/s. As such, it’s one of the few SSDs that can theoretically stuff desktop-class storage into a smartphone or tablet. Whether or not it will is another matter. Innodisk hasn’t named customers for the nanoSSD so far, which leaves us guessing just where or when we’ll see the drive in a finished product.
Filed under: Cellphones, Laptops, Tablets, Storage
Source: Innodisk
May 16
Apple patent application teams up multiple smartphone flashes for better lighting
Posted in: Today's Chili
Smartphone camera flashes are notoriously weak compared to dedicated models, but what if you could fire them from several handsets at once? Since none of us have the millisecond timing needed to do it manually, Apple has filed a patent application to let any number of iOS (or other devices with a flash) fill in the light automatically. It’d work by using a master device as the camera, which would trigger slave devices positioned around the subject to fire their flashes when the shutter is opened. A test image would first be taken and analyzed by the software, which would then remotely adjust the intensity of the slave flashes to produce the final photo. The filing allows for virtually any device with a sensor to act as the capture device and a broad variety of illumination devices, including dedicated lights, smartphones, tablets or camera flashes — though we imagine Apple would concentrate on its own products. If you’re already planning to use friend #1 for a kicker light, friend #2 as an eye-light and friend #3 as a hair light on that next outing, please remember it’s still just an application for now.
Filed under: Cellphones, Apple
Source: USPTO
Apr 24
Unity stops offering Flash game engine licenses, cites a lack of Adobe love
Posted in: Today's Chili 
The Unity 4 engine has given Flash gaming a lot of TLC by simplifying web ports of complex projects. If you ask Unity Technologies, however, that love isn’t being requited — and the company feels jilted enough to stop offering new Flash licenses, effective immediately. Adobe supposedly isn’t committed enough to the plugin, having halted work on both a re-engineered Flash Player Next as well as an attractive revenue sharing model. Unity is equally concerned about the broader developer community shying away from Flash at the same time as its own plugin, Unity Web Player, has soared past 200 million installs. While those with existing licenses should have Flash support for as long as versions of Unity 4 are in the field, the exit is bound to have game creators scrambling to find alternatives for any future web-based titles.
Filed under: Gaming, Internet, Software
Via: TechCrunch
Source: Unity Technologies
Apr 24
Unity Technologies, the company behind the widely used Unity 3D game engine, has ditched Flash, arguing that it is unconvinced that Adobe’s technology has any future in gaming. The company will stop selling Flash deployment licenses to developers immediately, though those who have already bought one will get support through the 4.x lifecycle of the add-on. Instead, Unity is working on a new web-publishing system, though the company isn’t saying exactly what it is yet.
According to David Helgason, Unity’s CEO and founder, the decision to abandon Flash is for several reasons, not least because the company doesn’t believe Adobe’s own heart is in it. Multiple members of the Flash team have been moved to other projects, Helgason points out, leaving recent releases unstable.
More importantly, perhaps, has been Adobe’s decision to launch a revenue sharing model but then pull the plug on it, a move which “eroded developers’ (and our) trust in Flash” the CEO says. The Unity Web Player has grown in “unprecedented” numbers, Helgason points out, while Flash publishing stagnates.
“We know that some of you have, like us, invested heavily in targeting Flash. We will do all we can to support you. We will keep the current Flash deployment feature set functioning throughout the Unity 4.x cycle, and will include bug fixes made in upcoming Unity 4.x iterations. We do not plan, however, to make further significant investments in deployment to the platform” David Helgason, CEO, Unity Technologies
One of the advantages of the Unity Web Player is its smooth integration with Facebook, Helgason says, in addition to teasing the company’s new system. It’s unclear at this stage whether it will use HTML5 and WebGL, current darlings of the web programming scene, though given their growing popularity it looks more than likely.
Unity 3D team dumps Flash for web gaming is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
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Apr 15
Welcome to IRL, an ongoing feature where we talk about the gadgets, apps and toys we’re using in real life and take a second look at products that already got the formal review treatment.
When he’s not copy editing Engadget, Philip Palermo likes to write about his gadget collection. And that gadget collection includes an impressive pile of camera gear (like this and this and this). Now he’s back, taking Fujifilm’s EF-X20 flash for a spin alongside his X-E1. Meanwhile, Dan’s found a bag spacious and compartmentalized enough to fit several days of clothing and all his trade show gear. Not an easy feat, folks.
Filed under: Misc
Apr 11
Samsung has been trying to squeeze as much storage as it can into its latest flash chips, and it’s done a good job: these 128-gigabit chunks of siliocn are, apparently, the industry’s highest density memory storage available. More »
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