Hasta La Gadget!

Even though it’s still a few months away, It looks like Microsoft is already gearing up for the official release of Windows RT. According to reports online, Microsoft has been silently updating its Microsoft account login page with a hint of Metro in the redesign. It hasn’t changed for me, so it’s probably a staged rollout or just a limited test, but from the screenshots I’ve seen, it looks pretty good (not like the previous login pages were bad, I just think this new interface is much more eye-pleasing).

In addition to the use of bright colors, some things have changed i.e. “Windows Live ID” has been replaced with “Microsoft account” and the “Sign in” button is slightly bigger, which should make it easier to press with your fingers on a touchscreen. I wonder if Microsoft will be revamping the looks of its services in addition to the login pages. What do you think of this new Metro-fied interface?

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Fujitsu Stylistic Q552 is another Windows tablet, Windows 8 confirmed for October release,

If you intend to spend you weekend tweeting while listening songs on the radio, you have to check out Stanley. Stanley is actually an interactive piano player that will be performing live beginning July 20 to 22. Yes, as of this writing, Stanley’s busy backstage preparing for his first show. But before you idolize Stanley, he’s actually a project created by the folks over at Digital Kitchen. Sorry girls, he’s wired to play the piano all day. But you can send your song requests via Twitter. So, how does it work?

Stanley is equipped with a computer that receives song requests via Twitter. The computer then queues the songs and sends a reply each time a song is ready to be played. Since Stanley has tons of songs stored on its MIDI library, it will send data to its hardware controller so that each note will activate a solenoid valve to play the keys on the piano. You can check out Stanley here. While the project is interesting, its creators have no plans of selling the piano player in the future. Instead, Digital Kitchen says that it will be hanging in the office waiting for his next big gig.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Tweet sends Bahrain activist to jail, Twitter for BlackBerry updated,

We already have a Facebook page with over 20,000 fans, however, we’re sure that you want more, so we decided that we needed a Social Reader specifically designed for people who love to hang out on Facebook and read their news from there.

All the stories that you enjoy reading on our website are now simultaneously available in our Social Reader. Additionally, the Ubergizmo Social Reader allows you to see which post your friends have read and keep track of the stories you have read in the “My Mag” section, post comments, and get access to the most popular articles.

See a few screenshots in the full article or try it live!

We would like to thank SnipeAd the company that developed the solution used in our Facebook Social Reader. (more…)

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Firefox developer says everyone hates Firefox updates, Samsung Series 5 550 Chromebook Review,

You may have noticed Google’s forecast feature on your HTML5-capable smartphone browser — simply typing “weather” into the search field brings up a basic real-time temperature tool, complete with hourly and five-day forecasts for your current location. That feature has been around in one form or another since the beginning of last year, but as of this week, it’s made its way to tablets, too. Web weather is entirely browser based, and you can bring it up in just the same way as on a smartphone — confirm that your GPS is enabled, then head to Google.com and type “weather” — you’ll be rewarded with a 10-day forecast, complete with temp, precipitation, humidity and wind speed readouts. The tool is interactive, so while you may only be able to view a few days of weather at once, you can simply slide along the timeline to see more. The same applies to the hourly forecast as well. There’s nothing to download or subscribe to for this one, and it’s available right now at Google.com.

James Trew contributed to this report.

Filed under: Cellphones, Tablet PCs, Internet, Software

Google adds browser-based weather feature to tablets with temperature, wind and precipitation originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 18 Jul 2012 18:42:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Microsoft unveiled a new architecture for Bing in May this year that included the nifty sidebar functionality, which promises to integrate with popular social networking platforms such as Twitter, Foursquare, LinkedIn, and Google Plus. Today, the team behind Bing is announcing the sidebar integration with Foursquare. Beginning today, Bing users in the U.S. will be able to view public tips from Foursquare in the sidebar column on the right hand side of the screen. Basically, public tips from Foursquare will appear on a user’s location and query search.

You can do venue search queries for places like Gary Danko in San Francisco, Chez Napoleon in New York, Whole Foods Market in Austin, Golden Gate Park, and more. “Now when you’re planning a trip to that dream destination, or a night on the town, you can find people who are knowledgeable about the place you’re searching, based on what they’ve publicly shared on Foursquare,” Swati Gharse of the Bing team said. This feature will be rolling out to all Bing users in the U.S. starting today. Hopefully, Bing will deploy this feature to other countries as well soon.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Bing Maps get 165TB arsenal of new images, Bing image search revamped,