Hasta La Gadget!

Looking to get your Jazzy Jeff on at the family Thanksgiving get-together? Starting on November 20th, Sony will reward its loyal PlayStation Plus members this holiday season by offering a year of its Music Unlimited Premium service at the discounted rate of $12. Regularly priced at $10 per month, this plan allows users to stream ad-free music across multiple devices, including: PS3, PSP, PS Vita, PC, Mac, iPod, iPhone, Android devices and more. For those without a PlayStation Plus subscription, you can pick up the service at a reduced premium of $60 for the year. Since Sony hasn’t detailed how long this promo will run, we suggest that you move swiftly if you’re looking to take advantage.

Continue reading Sony discounting one year of Music Unlimited Premium to $12 for PlayStation Plus members, $60 for everyone else

Filed under: Networking, Internet, Sony

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Source: Sony

Firefox on Android has been a luxury that devices running Google’s mobile OS with ARMv7 processors have had, but now Mozilla is broadening its browser’s horizons. Now, the latest version of Firefox’s mobile incarnation adds support for phones sporting ARMv6 processors with minimum speeds of 800mhz alongside at least 512MB of RAM. With those specs, that brings the HTC ChaCha and Status, LG Optimus Q, Motorola Fire XT, Samsung Galaxy Ace and others into the fold. In addition, the browser’s latest version brings Explore by Touch support on Jelly Bean and hardware and software decoding of H.264, AAC and MP3 formats on Android 4.0 and 4.1 devices. Fixes that address instability on Android 4.2 and text deletion issues also tag along in the release. To get your mitts on the download, simply tap the second source link below.

Filed under: Cellphones, Software, Mobile

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Source: Mozilla Blog, Google Play

Gmail didn’t become one of the world’s most popular email services with just one language; indeed, it supports 56 languages, ranging from Simplified Chinese to Hebrew. As of today, however, that list has grown to 57. The Cherokee, or “jaw la gee” language, has just been added to Gmail after Google Web Search incorporated it back in March 2011. The Mountain View company is not the first to do this — Apple did it with the iPhone and iPad back in 2010 — but email is a relatively new frontier. It apparently started after a Google engineer found himself in a car with a member of the Cherokee Nation and was persuaded by the need to encourage younger Cherokee generations to learn their native tongue.

After some collaboration with Durbin Feeling — the author of the Cherokee-English Dictionary — they found Cherokee terms for relatively modern words like “inbox,” “sign in” and amusingly, “spam.” They also added a Cherokee virtual keyboard (which joins more than 100 other keyboards in the system) so that Cherokee youth can use the language to communicate with each other. As much as we applaud the service, we do lament that even the Cherokee Nation won’t be safe from Nigerian prince scams, fake Neiman-Marcus cookie tales and terrible jokes forwarded by their mothers.

Filed under: Internet, Google

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Source: Official Gmail Blog

Leave it to Microsoft to power its cloud services with a very different kind of cloud — a smellier, gaseous one. The computing giant is investing $5.5 million in research and development to see if it can use the biogas from the Dry Creek Water Reclamation Facility in Cheyenne, Wyoming to fuel a data plant. It’s working together with the city of Cheyenne and a company called FuelCell Energy to get the project built by spring of 2013. According to Microsoft, the fuel cell plant will provide 200 kilowatts of power with any excess going back to reduce electricity cost. If all goes well, Microsoft aims to build more data plants near other sources of renewable energy like landfills, wastewater treatment plants and even dairy farms — an idea that HP labs had a couple of years ago. Hopefully this means the Redmond firm will finally reach its carbon neutral goal and not have to deliberately waste energy to avoid a fine. Together with army generators turning garbage into energy, we’re just keeping our fingers crossed that we’re one step closer to Mr. Fusion becoming a reality.

[Image credit: Yale Office of Sustainability]

Filed under: Misc, Alt, Microsoft

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Via: MIT Technology Review

Source: Microsoft Global Foundation Services Blog

It’s time for Thanksgiving, but whether or not you’re planning on overeating this weekend, there’s plenty of reasons to chill on the couch for a while. Football season is heating up, both college and pro, and throughout the week most of our primetime TV schedule remains intact. Of course, we will say goodbye to iCarly, and tune in for the final race of the F1 season.Look below for the highlights this week, followed after the break by our weekly listing of what to look out for in TV, Blu-ray and videogames.

Tarantino XX
While many high profile releases have either already gone on sale or are waiting until after the Black Friday rush, fans of Quentin Tarantino may be interested in this Lionsgate/Miramax collaboration. Collecting eight of the director’s movies into one box Tarantino XX includes special packaging and artwork as well as two extra discs with all new bonus materials. There’s a trailer after the break, if you somehow haven’t seen Reservoir Dogs, True Romance, Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, Kill Bill Vol. 1, Kill Bill Vol. 2, Death Proof and Inglourious Basterds yet.
($69.99 on Amazon)

Brazilian F1 GP
The Formula One season wraps up this weekend at Interlagos, and the driver’s championship is still in doubt. Whether you’re watching to see Vettel take his third series victory in a row, hoping for Alonso to snatch the crown away or waiting to see if the drivers on the move next year like Hamilton, Schumacher or Perez snatches one last victory under their current banner, it should be an exciting one.
(November 25th, 11AM, Speed TV)

The Walking Dead – The Video Game
While the current season of the AMC TV show still has a couple of episodes left before break, Telltale is dropping the finale of its episodic adventure series this week. According to Joystiq the story has improved as it’s gone along, snag the digital download on your platform of choice (Xbox Live, PSN, PC, Mac, iOS) to find out how the story of Lee and Clementine ends.
(November 20th on PSN, 21st everywhere else)

Continue reading Must See HDTV (November 19th – 25th)

Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD

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