Hasta La Gadget!

As an augmented reality navigator that you want to use for finding pizza joints and friends on Foursquare and Twitter, you’ve got more polished options than Junaio’s new 2.0 release — Layar and Yelp, just to name a couple — but Junaio has at least one interesting differentiator with a feature it calls “Glue.” Basically, independent content providers can develop their own Junaio “channels,” which function in the same way as a Layar layer — it’s a particular set of points of interest that’ll be displayed in the current view. With Glue, though, Junaio isn’t just using your positional information as a point of reference, it can also scan the image for specific objects that developers have programmed their channel to look for, and when such an object is found, crazy things can happen.

In Junaio’s demo, pointing the camera at a superhero-type cartoon dude causes a 3D representation of him to be rendered on the phone’s screen; when you tap on him, he’ll point his gun. It’s an interesting concept that could eventually have some commercial implications, but in the short term, the company just needs to improve the app — it crashed several times for us, and its support for changing orientation is a little wonky. If you want to check it out, it’s a free download for both the iPhone and Android; while you wait for the install, check out our quick video demo after the break.

Continue reading Junaio’s augmented reality app for iPhone and Android can add cartoons to your otherwise-boring existence

Junaio’s augmented reality app for iPhone and Android can add cartoons to your otherwise-boring existence originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 07 Jul 2010 18:14:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A little while back Google boldly claimed that Froyo would have the world’s fastest mobile browser, but the lack of final software back then meant we’d had to tie up our itchy hands until now. And boy, it sure looks like it was worth the wait — Ars Technica’s JavaScript benchmarks show that not only is Froyo’s browser almost three times faster than its Éclair counterpart, but it also beats iOS 4’s Safari by at least two-fold. That said, numbers alone don’t always reflect real-life performance — especially with Froyo supporting iPhone’s much-missed Flash — so we went ahead and conducted our own browser speed test. Read on for our videos and results after the jump.

Update: for those who were concerned about the battery affecting the Nexus One’s performance, we did use Android System Info to verify that the CPU was still clocked at 1GHz. We were also able to reproduce the same results with a full battery. Either way, it’s still a win for Android.

Continue reading Android 2.2 (Froyo) versus iOS 4: the browser showdown (video)

Android 2.2 (Froyo) versus iOS 4: the browser showdown (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 07 Jul 2010 13:56:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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There’s now a rather meaty thread on Mac Rumors‘ forums detailing problems that iPhone 4 users have had with miserably slow upload speeds in HSPA-equipped AT&T markets — speeds that had in some cases been well over 1Mbps before the holiday weekend but have since fallen to 100kbps or lower. A popular theory is that AT&T decided to cap speeds in light of the iPhone 4’s success and the danger it poses to network oversaturation, but we’re not buying it — 100kbps is ridiculously slow for an HSUPA-enabled network, even a heavily-used one, and there are huge markets (LA, for example) that seemingly aren’t affected. We don’t know what’s going on, but we’ve reached out to AT&T for comment and we’ll let you know what’s up as soon as we do.

AT&T having HSPA upload speed problems in some markets originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 06 Jul 2010 14:07:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Earlier this week we reported on a story that had been doing the rounds — another Steve Jobs email thread with an irate customer. Like many other stories about Jobs’ emails to customers, this yarn centered around a user disappointed with his iPhone 4’s service, and Steve’s flippant responses. The first time we saw the story crop up, we were suspicious of its validity (and frankly, newsworthiness), and we became even more suspicious after AppleInsider ran an article claiming that the source of the supposed emails had been shopping the tale for cash (Engadget was not contacted by the source). We did eventually cover the story, but only after Apple itself responded to the tale, claiming — first to Fortune and then to us — that the emails were false, and the exchange had not happened. That struck us as particularly newsworthy, because in all our years of reporting on Steve Jobs’ wild personal emails (of which there are many, many examples), we’d never heard Apple refute that the emails were coming from him.

Now, Boy Genius Report (where the original story appeared) has fired back, emphatically claiming that the emails are real, and that the proof is in the original message headers which the site has been given access to by the source. BGR goes one step further as well, and essentially accuses Apple PR of spinning this story to news outlets to suit its needs. And let’s not mince words — the claim is that Apple PR is lying to the press. The proof which BGR offers is no more or less convincing to us than the site’s previous post on the subject; email headers and timestamps can be faked. Still, it is notable that Boy Genius is pushing back on this story, and we certainly don’t believe the blog would knowingly publish a false email thread. As TechCrunch points out in its take on the matter, PR reps often give vague, sugarcoated, or misleading information to news sites, but there has never been a time when Apple’s PR has outright lied to major publications (that we know of). That would be a mess of epic proportions, and we can’t really fathom why they would go to the trouble. The company has obviously let stuff like this slide for years — this seems like an odd time (and a relatively minor story) to get up in arms about it. We’ve reached out to Apple for further statement on this, and will report back as soon as we hear something. In the meantime, take a look at the source link and see what BGR has to say on the matter.

Steve Jobs emails ‘are real’ claims Boy Genius Report, says Apple PR lied to press originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 03 Jul 2010 18:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Like gadgets? Ever stand in line for one or over-consume just to slake your obsession? Yeah, us too. Then prepare for a humorous yet brutal look at yourselves, and the impact of your lifestyle, in the newest Futurama episode that aired tonight on Comedy Central television. We suggest curling up into a protective fetal position before clicking through for the video scraps.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Continue reading Futurama critiques modern gadget and social media obsession using 1950s technology (video)

Futurama critiques modern gadget and social media obsession using 1950s technology (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 02 Jul 2010 01:56:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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