Jan 13
Xbox Live’s programming director says Microsoft ran out of consoles last month, which would likely put its unit sales figures behind those of Nintendo.
Originally posted at The Digital Home
Jan 13
The battle for world’s best in-ear headphone show no signs of letting up. Westone’s ES5 might be the new king of the hill.
Originally posted at The Audiophiliac
Jan 13
Shazam, Spotify Team Up
Posted in: iPhone, itunes, MP3 Digital Audio, Today's Chili
Music tagging service Shazam is getting a powerful new ally–the popular European music service Spotify. Says Spotify head, Daniel Ek of the deal, “Now if you hear a great new track you can identify it, listen to it instantly in its entirety and easily add it to your music collection. That’s pretty powerful stuff.”
Spotify will be added to the list of services that users can purchase identified music from, alongside bigger stores like Amazon and iTunes.
Spotify was founded in Sweden in 2006. Unlike Shazam, which has made major waves in the US, courtesy of its iPhone app, the service has yet to break into this country, a market still almost entirely dominated by Apple’s music service. The service has become popular quite quickly in its native continent, however.
No word on whether this European deal will help speed up the service’s arrival in the States.
Jan 13
Samsung refreshes netbooks with dual-core NC210, among others
Posted in: laptop, lte, netbook, netbooks, samsung, Today's Chili
Samsung has outed three new netbooks, all refreshes to previous models. On offer is the 10.1-inch NC210, which boasts a dual-core, Intel Atom N550 CPU with up to 3GB of DDR3 SDRAM, a 250GB hard drive, 802.11 b/g/n WiFi, LAN, and Bluetooth 3.0. It’s also got a VGA port, three USB 2.0 ports, a 4-in-1 card reader, and a 6-cell battery. The company has also trotted out the NC110, which boasts a 1.5GHz, dual-core Atom N570 but seems to be identical to the NC210 other than that.
In other, rather less exciting Samsung netbook news, the company also rolled out the NF310, and the NS310, the former one being an LTE-packing 10.1-incher, while the NS310 is yet another netbook of the same size with a metallic chassis. There aren’t full specs, pricing or availability yet for any of these models, but you can hit up the source links for more photos.
Samsung refreshes netbooks with dual-core NC210, among others originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 13 Jan 2011 11:17:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Jan 13
We’re at IBM’s HQ in upstate NY, where IBM will pit its monstrous Watson project (in the middle buzzer spot) against two Jeopardy greats, Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter. Watson has been in development for four years, and this is its first big public practice match before it goes on national TV in February for three matches against these giants of trivia. Unlike IBM’s Deep Blue chess project in the 90s, which was pretty much pure math, Watson has to deal with the natural language and punny nature of real Jeopardy questions. IBM, ever the salesman, has thrown gobs of its fancy server hardware at the project, with 10 racks full of IBM Power 750 servers, stuffed with 15 terabytes of RAM and 2,880 processor operating at a collective 80 teraflops. IBM says it would take one CPU over two hours to answer a typical question, so this massive parallel processing is naturally key — hopefully fast enough to buzz in before Ken and Brad catch on to the human-oriented questioning. We’ll update this post as the match begins, and we’ll have some video for you later in the day.
Continue reading IBM demonstrates Watson supercomputer in Jeopardy practice match
IBM demonstrates Watson supercomputer in Jeopardy practice match originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 13 Jan 2011 11:04:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Jan 13
Here’s a report sure to raise the ire of safety advocates, everywhere. According to a new study, an increase in the number of people driving while talking on the phone may have actually made us all safer.
The study, conducted by Saurabh Bhargava of the University of Chicago and Vikram Pathania from London’s School of Economics studied 440,000 made by California drivers over 11 days. They found no significant increase in crashes from those drivers using their cells. The study comes as the number of traffic accidents declines, in spite of an increase in those talking while driving.
So, how could “distracted driving” actually make you safer? Bhargava and Pathania have a few theories. First, there’s the fact that drivers are often extra cautious when they pick up the phone behind the while. Also, those who are crappy drivers while talking on their phone may just be crappy drivers in general.
Makes sense, I suppose. It also flies in the face of pretty much everything we’ve ever heard about distracted driving, ever–including a number of laws that have been passed over the past couple of years.
Of course, we can’t really recommend that anyone go out and actually try it–after all, who will keep the Bluetooth headset companies in business?
Jan 13
Centrafuse leads to iPhone control via touchscreen, carputer dreams come to life (video)
Posted in: app, Apple, hack, ios, iPhone, mod, screen, Software, Today's Chili, touchscreen, uk, video
We’ve seen countless individuals integrate their phone, PMP or tablet into their whip, but for years, we’ve all been thinking the same thing: “There has to be an easier way.” Turns out, there is. One Mr. Romin has seemingly unearthed the solution, which involves a Lilliput FA1042 touchpanel, a Belkin AV dock adapter cable and a critical piece of software by the name of Centrafuse. Working in conjunction, he has enabled his monitor to actually control the iPhone, and when firing up a YouTube video, the content plays back on the big screen while the controls remain visible on the handset. It’s a nifty setup, for sure, and we’re downright excited to see this rig get installed in a vehicle far too small for American roads in a fortnight or so. For now, catch it working in action just past the break.
Centrafuse leads to iPhone control via touchscreen, carputer dreams come to life (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 13 Jan 2011 10:55:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Jan 13
RIM releases WebWorks SDK beta
Posted in: Today's ChiliWebWorks is intended to give Web and mobile developers skilled in HTML5, JavaScript, and CSS the tools to create apps for RIM’s upcoming PlayBook tablet.
Originally posted at News – Wireless
Jan 13
Freecom gets slim with Mobile Drive Mg portable hard drive, supports USB 3.0 and FireWire 800
Posted in: external hard drive, ExternalHardDrive, hard drive, HardDrive, storage, Today's Chili, usb, usb 3.0, Usb3.0
Been awhile, hasn’t it Freecom? The same company responsible for serving up the world’s first portable USB 3.0 hard drive is now responsible for cranking out the world’s slimmest portable HDD. At just ten millimeters thick, the Mobile Drive Mg is likely thinner than your average ink pen, touting a magnesium enclosure and a USB 3.0 port, enabling it to shoot data back and forth at rates as high as 130MB/sec. Oddly enough, the drive will only be made available through Apple Premium Resellers, despite the fact that no existing Mac ships with native USB 3.0 support. At any rate, it’ll be on sale within the week for $69.95 (320GB) or $109.95 (750GB), with a high-end 750GB model offering both USB 3.0 and FireWire 800 for $119.95.
Freecom gets slim with Mobile Drive Mg portable hard drive, supports USB 3.0 and FireWire 800 originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 13 Jan 2011 10:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Jan 13
iPad 2 May Drop Home Button – Report
Posted in: Apple, ipad, Today's Chili
Steve Jobs hates buttons. He has said this before. Multiple times. In a very public fashion. In fact, we’re pretty sure that it has pained him that he’s had to feature the Home button on the iPhone, iPod, and iPad–a single aesthetic imperfection that has nearly driven him crazy, like the lead character in some Nathaniel Hawthorne short story.
Well, it seems that the Apple head may finally be able to live his mobile life in a completely button-free bliss. Word from Boy Genius Report is that the company is set to drop the Home button for some future version of the iPad. In fact, the latest version of iOS (4.3) added multitouch gestures for precisely that reason, according to the site’s “sources.”
The disappearing button will eventually make its way to the iPhone as well, according to the aforementioned report. This aesthetic update may or may not make its way onto iOS devices released in 2011.
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