Hasta La Gadget!

We just got our hands on Wi-FI Sync and guess what? It actually works — fancy that! For those of you out of the loop, Apple recently rejected this gem of an app (go figure), but thanks to the magic of jailbreaking, that was hardly the end of the road. Days later, Wi-Fi Sync ended up on Cydia (Mac-only, for now) with a completely-affordable price tag of $9.99, promising iPhone and iPod touch users the ability to sync their device with iTunes sans any cabling whatsoever. Since we’re notoriously lazy when it comes to actually plugging in our phones and syncing, we fired up the program on our jailbroken 3GS in order to see exactly what the law-abiders in attendance were missing out on.

Installation couldn’t have been easier. We parted ways with our Hamilton, downloaded the necessary companion software for our laptop, and fired up the application. The iPhone was immediately recognized, and after a few prompts we were ready for action. Syncing was just as easy as it normally is (with “easy” being a relative term here), just without that iPod wire hanging around and bumming everyone out. We will say, however, that things weren’t as snappy OTA as a standard hardwired connection. It was a bit sluggish on the first couple of runs, and although iTunes crashed a few times (boo), we’re fairly confident in saying that a poor WiFi connection was to blame for the jankiness. Once we migrated closer to the router, things went much smoother. Still unsure if it’s worth the investment? Then give the video past the break a look.

Continue reading Wi-Fi Sync for iPhone video hands-on: it works!

Wi-Fi Sync for iPhone video hands-on: it works! originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 17 May 2010 10:07:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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ICANN decided late last year that URLs would finally be allowed with non-Latin characters, but it wasn’t until this week that the first one was set free onto the world wide web. The new hot place to visit is http://موقع.وزارة-الأتصالات.مصر/, and while you’ll need to know a bit of Arabic to actually pronounce it, you don’t have to have any foreign language skills to click the link and see what happens. As of now, the site loads as http://xn--4gbrim.xn—-rmckbbajlc6dj7bxne2c.xn--wgbh1c/ in pretty much every browser we’ve tried here in the US, but all of the site content seems to populate just fine. Remember that URL gold rush from last century? Round two is officially on.

First non-Latin domain name goes live, trips out browsers originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 10 May 2010 05:16:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Internet Explorer market share falls below 60 percent for first time, according to NetApplications originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 03 May 2010 19:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Where Steve Jobs leads, Microsoft follows — how’s that for shaking up the hornet’s nest? It’s said in jest, of course, but we’ve just come across a post from the General Manager for Internet Explorer, Dean Hachamovitch, and the perspective expressed by him on the subject of web content delivery broadly agrees with the essay penned by Jobs yesterday on the very same subject. Echoing the Apple CEO’s words, Hachamovitch describes HTML5 as “the future of the web,” praising it for allowing content to be played without the need for plug-ins and with native hardware acceleration (in both Windows 7 and Mac OS X). He goes on to identify H.264 as the best video codec for the job — so much so that it’ll be the only one supported in IE9’s HTML5 implementation — before turning to the dreaded subject of Flash.

This is where it gets good, because he literally repeats one of Jobs’ six pillars of Flash hate: “reliability, security, and performance” are not as good as Microsoft would like them. Where Hachamovitch diverges from Apple’s messiah, however, is in describing Flash as an important part of “a good consumer experience on today’s web,” primarily because it’s difficult for the typical consumer to access Flash-free content. Still, it’s got to be depressing for Adobe’s crew when the best thing either of the two biggest players in tech has to say about your wares is that they’re ubiquitous. Wonder how Shantanu Narayen is gonna try and spin this one.

P.S. : it’s notable that in multiple paragraphs of discussing “the future,” Microsoft’s IE general fails to once mention the fabled Silverlight, itself a rich media browser plug-in. Given Silverlight’s featured role in the Windows Phone 7 infrastructure and other things like Netflix, we doubt it’s on the outs, but there are sure to be some sour faces greeting Hachamovitch this morning.

[Thanks, KnifeX4]

Microsoft weighs in: ‘the future of the web is HTML5’ originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 30 Apr 2010 04:05:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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So you’ve seen how Apple intends to handle printing on its web-centric mobile device, now how about Google? The Mountain View crew has decided to solve one of Chrome OS‘ significant shortcomings — namely the lack of a printer stack or drivers — by interposing itself between apps and the printing hardware. Essentially, when you want to print you’ll be sending your request over to a Googlestation up in the clouds, which in turn will translate those instructions and forward them along to the nearest paper tarnisher. We say nearest, presuming that’s what you’d want, but the big deal here is that you’ll be able to use any device to print on any printer anywhere in the (internet-connected) world. It’s quite the brute force approach, but at least it assures you that whether you’re using a mobile, desktop or web app, you’ll be able to print without fear of compatibility issues. This project is still at a very early stage, but code and dev documentation are available now. Hit the source link to learn more.

Google Cloud Print service aims for unified, universal web printing method originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 16 Apr 2010 07:54:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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