Hasta La Gadget!

Gift cards often get a bad rap as the last resort in holiday shopping, what we supposedly get only when all hope of a carefully considered present has gone out the window. Apple isn’t quite so cyncial, and it may have injected new life into gift giving now that it has switched on buying gift cards through the recently updated Apple Store iOS app as of this weekend. Pick a color and a card value — up to $2,000, if someone’s been good enough to earn a MacBook Pro — and the resulting email lets iOS 6-touting recipients load the card into Passbook. Besides saving some plastic, the Passbook entry adds some worth through geofencing that reminds recipients to splurge if they’re near one of Apple’s steel-and-glass stores. All told, the card may be more than welcome by iPhone fans and save the ignominy of a last-minute rush to the store. Just make sure the recipient doesn’t mind going without a physical gift on the big day — it wouldn’t be right to drain all the romanticism out of a special occasion.

Filed under: Cellphones, Internet, Apple

Apple starts offering Passbook-enabled gift cards, may save our hides in holiday shopping originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 11 Nov 2012 14:47:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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As eagerly as Google has gone through routing acrobatics to minimize the Chinese government’s ability to censor and spy on its its services, it’s still at the mercy of the Great Firewall. The company might have just run head-first into the bricks as of Friday. As confirmed by some of our own staff, all of Google’s services stopped working in China for at least the better part of a day despite the search firm verifying that everything was in good working order. Officials haven’t confirmed that anything was afoot, but it’s easy to raise the specter of possible censorship given local political maneuvering. The once-a-decade Communist Party Congress began on Thursday, and the establishment may have wanted to cut off a relatively unfiltered line of communication for dissidents during a transition of power. We’re hearing that access may have ameliorated in at least parts of the country, which would be a pleasant surprise — not that a sudden improvement in service will cheer up those who know they still face a backlog.

Update: As SlashGear notes, Computerworld / IDG has reported that Google’s services were up and running in country again after about 12 hours of being inaccessible. Official details on the blocking are still slim as ever (and will likely remain as such) about the happenings, but you can click through the links above for more in the meantime.

Filed under: Networking, Internet, Google

Google services grind to a halt in China, political transition suspected as the culprit (update) originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 10 Nov 2012 00:14:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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NASA (and the ESA) have long been working on a multi-planet internet that can link up spaceships, probes and rovers, but they’ve at last brought the experimentation from the broad scale to smaller dimensions. Lego bricks, to be exact. International Space Station expedition lead Sunita Williams recently steered a Lego Mindstorms robot at an ESA facility in Darmstadt while she orbited overhead, proving that future space explorers could directly control a vehicle on a planetary surface while staying out of harm’s way. As in the past, the key to the latest dry run was a Disruption-Tolerant Networking (DTN) system; the focus was more on reliably getting packets through to the brick-based vehicle than on pure speed. As tame as that Earth-bound test drive might sound relative to an in-the-field use on a less familiar world, it demonstrates that the DTN approach can work when it really counts. We just wouldn’t hold our breath for any Martian RC car races.

Filed under: Robots, Science, Internet, Alt

ESA, NASA test interplanetary internet by remote controlling a Lego robot from the ISS originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 09 Nov 2012 11:40:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Earlier today, Opera unveiled its new Web Pass service, which provides a means for operators to offer pay-as-you-go Internet access to subscribers. The service is being touted as a “one-click experience” that tailors data access to the needs of users who don’t have a mobile data plan. A user can shell out $2, for example, to get data access while waiting to catch the bus.

This feature will potentially bring Internet access to those who, for whatever reason, don’t have a data plan with their carrier. One of the touted features is the convenience of choosing a web access duration rather than a data limit, such as 100MB. There’s no set price for the service, since it would depend on the carrier, which needs to have a deal with Opera in order for subscribers to take advantage of this service.

Opera Software’s CEO Lars Boilesen offered this statement. “We see this as a great way of lowering the bar for millions of users who are taking their first steps out to the mobile web. We are excited about working with our operator partners and making the web even more accessible and tailored to the needs of a growing mobile internet community.”

For now, DiGi Telecommunications in Malaysia has signed up as the first operator to offer subscribers Web Pass. Subscribers can access the Internet on either an hourly or daily basis, with 1 hour of service costing 1RM and a day of service costing 2RM. Facebook-only service is also provided at half the cost of full web access. Operators can set up their own pricing and access structure, including duration, websites that can be visited, and the cost for each pass.

[via Opera]

Opera announces Web Pass one-click Internet access is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
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What’s better than saving some precious and valuable time, right? Well, if you’re a power Facebook resident and FedEx is your carrier of choice, then you’ll be happy to hear all about Ship to Friends. With this new Facebook app, the company previously known as Federal Express will make it easier for you to send your friends packages without ever having to virtually step out of Zuck’s social network. Essentially, this means you’ll be able to simply select a user from your Friends list, add the necessary shipping info and, finally, choose the delivery speed (i.e. Premium Choice or Best Deal) and pay for the service — naturally, however, you’ll still have to get the package ready and drop it off at the nearest FedEx shop. Unfortunately, Ship to Friends is only available to Stateside folks for shipments within the US, and FedEx made no mention of when, or if, it plans to start offering its new handy service elsewhere.

Continue reading FedEx makes shipping packages to Facebook friends easier with new ‘Ship to Friends’ app

Filed under: Internet

FedEx makes shipping packages to Facebook friends easier with new ‘Ship to Friends’ app originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 09 Nov 2012 01:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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