Hasta La Gadget!

Warner Bros. is making things a little less needful for new Blu-ray buyers with extensive DVD libraries in need of upgrading, slashing the lowest prices on its DVD2Blu upgrade program to $4.95 (+ the original DVD copy) and adding more movies to the list of eligibles for a total of 87. Of course there’s still a catch, as the minimum order needed to score free shipping ($4.95 per order) has risen $10 to $35. Of course, if you’ve been looking for an opportunity to catch 2001: A Space Odyssey and Gran Torino and Ocean’s Eleven in all their 1080p glory then check the price list after the break and do the math — this offer might be for you.

Continue reading Warner’s DVD2Blu trade-up program gets bigger, cheaper (maybe)

Warner’s DVD2Blu trade-up program gets bigger, cheaper (maybe) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 07 May 2010 09:44:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Fresh leaks arrived this week lending credibility to HTC’s EVO 4G rumored June release date. According to newly leaked documents, Sprint’s next Android-based phone could go on sale in a matter of weeks. pOriginally posted at a href=”http://www.cnet.com/8301-19736_1-10474067-251.html” class=”origPostedBlog”Android Atlas/a/p

Samsung still hasn’t managed to get the Wave or any other Bada handset to market yet, but it’s doing the right thing by offering developers the software development kit first. Granted, with a planned June release Samsung isn’t managing the same sort of massive lead-time that Microsoft has with its Windows Phone 7 SDK, but a few weeks of pressure-free coding are better than none. The first public SDK for Bada was just made available yesterday, and inside developers will find an Eclipse-based IDE, a phone emulator, and tutorials. You can get it all for yourself at the source link below, but make sure you get your reading glasses out before clicking through. You’ll need to agree to not one, not two, but four separate sets of terms and conditions before you can get this 606MB download flowing, and a fifth before it’ll install. Oh, and it’s all C/C++ based, so if you’ve been living in the merry land of Java and C# lately you’d better brush up on pointer dereferencing and interface definitions.

[Thanks, Sacha]

Samsung releases Bada SDK for developers who want to ride the Wave originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 07 May 2010 09:16:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple has finally decided when customers outside the US will be able to buy an iPad. The wonder device will ship in Canada, Australia and much of Europe on May 28th. You can pre-order yours from May 10th.

The press release is spartan. No mention is made of which model will be shipping, so we will assume that both the iPad and iPad 3G will be available from launch. Neither have prices been decided, although obviously those will have to be made public on the 10th in order for people to pay. The recent economic troubles in Greece may affect the pricing: The Euro has crashed against the US dollar, meaning that Apple may want to jack up prices to keep its margins.

Here’s the full list of countries in which the iPad will be available: Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the UK. The iPad will be spreading further across the globe in July, with launches planned in Austria, Belgium, Hong Kong, Ireland, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand and Singapore.

The country-specific Apple Store pages have not yet been updated to reflect this announcement. We wonder just how “available” the iPad will be. When the iPhone first came to Spain, it was almost impossible to find for weeks, despite crazy-high prices. Me? I’m just hoping my contact in New York can stay sober for long enough to send one over to me.

iPad Available in Nine More Countries on May 28 [Apple]

See Also:

• Apple Delays International iPad Launch Until 'End of May'

Using Apple’s Camera Connection Kit, it is possible to hook up a USB hard drive to your iPad and read files. The catch is that you’ll need to jailbreak the iPad first.

Maxwell Shay, iPad owner and now iPad hacker, offers a rather involved but straightforward walk-through on his blog. First, you need to use the Spirit jailbreak to open up the iPad and allow third-party apps to be installed. Then you need to grab an application called iFile (available in the Cydia application repository on your jailbroken iPad for $4, with a free trial), along with the “Nano” terminal text editor.

After that, you’ll need to be confident of your command line skills, as you’ll be using SSH and editing PLIST files. The step-by-step instructions will get you through.

Then you need to hook up the USB drive. The iPad’s port will not power it, so you’ll need a desktop version with a power adapter, or a Y-cable that will let you plug the drive into the iPAd and a second, powered, USB port (your iPad charger, for example).

Maxwell demoes his hack using the iPad PDF viewer Goodreader, available in the real App Store, but any file-browsing app should see the contents of the drive. From there, you can browse and open files, as well as copy them to the iPad’s internal storage. You probably don’t want to do this on the go, due to the limitations of plugging the drive into a power source, but if you want to grab a bunch of photos or movies from a friend’s home, for example, this hack will let you copy them for take-away.

That overpriced Camera Connection Kit is starting to look a lot more useful. In fact, although Maxwell doesn’t try it, this hack should also let you use the SD card reader from the same kit for arbitrary file storage, not just for photos and videos.

How to Mount External FAT32 and HFS Hard Drives [Time More via Engadget]

See Also:

• Video: Hackers Have Already Jailbroken the iPad
• iPad Jailbreak Ready for Download
• Jailbreak App Turns iPhone Into 3G Modem for iPad
• iPad USB Camera Connector Works With Keyboards, Audio In-Out …