Barnes & Noble Nook’s first close-up (now with video!)

There she blows, we’ll be getting hands-on and try to scrap together some impressions of the Nook if they let us touch it once this Q&A is done. The device is a bit thicker than some, and certainly looks minimal up front. The LCD is nice, but not overly bright, and that’s about all we spotted before it was snatched away. Check out the gallery for a few more fleeting shots and a look at a non-functioning prototype for a better idea of the unit’s shape.

Update: We got a closer look at the device, though they still haven’t let us touch it. The LCD seems very “passive,” and has a shallow viewing angle — obviously to gather more ambient light and save on battery. The interface appears relatively intuitive, but we’re a little confused and doubtful about the highlighting features — it brings up a software d-pad on screen, and seemed a little unwieldy, though we’ll only find out for ourselves when they actually let us get our grubby paws on the thing.

Update 2:
We’ve got some video! It’s so very exciting, and can be found after the break.


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Barnes & Noble Nook’s first close-up (now with video!) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 20 Oct 2009 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A video walkthrough of Apple’s newest additions (Unibody MacBook, iMac, Magic Mouse)

Sure, you’ve seen the hands-on posts and the PR, but have you really gotten a look at Apple’s new gear? Join us for a quick and spirited walkthrough of the goods. You won’t be disappointed. Or you might be. It really depends on how picky you are.

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A video walkthrough of Apple’s newest additions (Unibody MacBook, iMac, Magic Mouse) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 20 Oct 2009 16:12:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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New iMac and Magic Mouse unboxing and quick hands-on

They’re in the house! The brand new ultra-wide all-aluminum iMac has been unboxed inside the hallowed halls of the Engadget HQ, and inside was a real scarcity of wires, a keyboard (which now requires one less battery but otherwise looks exactly the same), and of course that brand new multitouch Magic Mouse. It feels much thinner than its predecessor, and the whole front of the unit provides a satisfying, unified click. The runners on the bottom make the mouse seem almost more appropriate for sledding than mousing, but it glides around just fine on a solid surface. Pics galore in the gallery below.

When we flicked the mouse on it was easy enough to spot it over Bluetooth on our regular Mac, but it only worked with tracking and single click — none of this capacitive nonsense without a software update, naturally. On the iMac’s first boot it was able to pick up the mouse and keyboard without a problem, even letting us use the capacitive scrolling to work through the setup wizard. We quickly spotted our first usability problem: coming from a trackpad heavy workflow, our fingers were expecting a capacitive tap-to-click action, instead of having to physically click the mouse. It’s not a huge problem, but there’s no 1:1 usability model between an Apple trackpad and this mouse. Scrolling is single finger, with a two finger left or right swipe doing back / forward in a browser or the finder. Right clicking requires a lifting of the left click finger, just like the Mighty Mouse, though all-in-all it feels much less frustrating to use than the Mighty Mouse, which almost seems to rage against the click at times. Like we said before: no pinch to zoom, but given the shape and texture of the surface, we’re not sure we could pull it off even if the software allowed for it.

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New iMac and Magic Mouse unboxing and quick hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 20 Oct 2009 12:57:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple’s new MacBook unboxing and hands-on!

We just took delivery of Apple’s new MacBook — it’s an interesting revision to the MacBook formula, built using the same unibody techniques as the Aluminum Pros but with white plastic. That means it feels much more solid than the previous plastic MacBooks: there’s zero flex when you pick it up by a corner, and the keyboard is nicely rigid. There’s a price for that heft, though — the battery is now sealed in, although we’re guessing it won’t be too hard to replace if you remove the soft-touch rubber bottom panel. Unlike the Pros, the screen is still set in by a plastic bezel instead of edge-to-edge glass, which means it’s a little less glossy overall — but make no mistake, it can still serve as a mirror in a pinch. Ports are looking pretty dismal — there’s no FireWire, no SD card slot, no dedicated line-in. Instead you get just two USB 2.0 ports, Ethernet, Mini DisplayPort, and a combo headphone / line-in jack. That’s pretty weak in a thousand-dollar machine. We’re going to spend some more time playing with this thing before we dish out a proper review, though — anything you want to know?

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Apple’s new MacBook unboxing and hands-on! originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 20 Oct 2009 12:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sonos S5 ears-on review: a premium iPod speaker dock without the dock

We had the opportunity to hear a preview of the $399 Sonos S5 all-in-one speaker ahead of its 27 October US launch (November 10th in Europe). For comparison, we had it staged side-by-side with a pair of Sonos 100 speakers — a setup that costs $678 ($499 for an amplified Sonos ZonePlayer Z120 and another $179 for the separate loudspeakers). Unfair, perhaps, since Sonos is actually positioning its five speaker (two tweeters, two 3-inch mids, and a built-in 3.5-inch sub) S5 with five dedicated amps against premium iPod speaker docks like the $600 Bose SoundDock 10, $600 B&W Zeppelin, or legacy $349 Apple iPod Hi-Fi. So how did it sound? About what we expected, which in this case is a good thing. Click through to find out why.

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Sonos S5 ears-on review: a premium iPod speaker dock without the dock originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 20 Oct 2009 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Engadget Show: Inside Ben Heck’s magic kingdom


If you’re a reader of Engadget (and let’s be honest — you’re reading this, right?) then you surely know Ben Heck’s work. The master modder has been the source of some of our favorite tweaks, hacks, and flat-out crazy gadget manipulations over the years. We recently had a chance to take a peek inside his workshop and hear straight from Ben about what drives him to create the madness we’ve see on our pages. It’s a phantasmagoric adventure you won’t likely forget — so sit back, crack a cold one, and enjoy the ride!

Note: Don’t forget, our next full length Engadget Show is happening this Thursday, and our guest is Steve Ballmer!

Update:
Video is now live! Sorry about that!

Host: Nilay Patel
Produced and Directed by: Chad Mumm
Edited by: Michael Slavens
Music by: Bit Shifter

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The Engadget Show: Inside Ben Heck’s magic kingdom originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 19 Oct 2009 12:22:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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LG BL40 New Chocolate review


You know the deal by now: we grab a slab of fresh new hardware, fiddle, play, and tinker with it until exhaustion or boredom is reached, then wax poetic about the whole experience, with a side serving of pictures and videos thrown in. Today’s candidate for a grilling is LG’s BL40, which is now available in Europe. You’ll be familiar with it already from our hands-on look last month, but do join us over at Engadget Mobile where we explore what’s under the glossy hood in more detail, and give you a definitive answer on just how useful that elongated screen really is.

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LG BL40 New Chocolate review originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 19 Oct 2009 11:44:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Flock 2.0 Based on Firefox 3 – Beta Coming Soon

This article was written on June 03, 2008 by CyberNet.

Mozilla is hard at work getting ready for the launch of Firefox 3, and another Release Candidate is scheduled to be available tomorrow. They are still planning for a June launch of the next major milestone, and there is a lot of hype and anticipation surrounding the release. One thing you don’t want to forget about is the Flock browser that is based upon Firefox!

The Flock team is working equally as hard to make sure that they update their browser with all of the Firefox 3 goodness as soon as possible. As you might recall it took them quite awhile to update their browser to Firefox 2 after its release, but it appears that they won’t be making that same mistake again. Here’s a snippet that I took from a post on the Flock blog yesterday:

Within the coming weeks Flock will release it’s first beta of Flock 2.0, which incorporates the Mozilla technology that powers Firefox 3. So get ready to have all of the latest performance (memory management), security and feature enhancements found in the latest Firefox 3 release along with the unique user experience innovations only delivered by the Flock browser.

The first thought that popped into my head was that the nightly builds of Flock must already have the Firefox 3 integration if a Beta will be available in the coming weeks. Sure enough! I downloaded the nightly build (targeted towards developers only), and as you can see from the screenshot it is definitely based on Firefox 3:

Note the oversized location bar new to Firefox 3:
flock 2 firefox 3.jpg
(Click to Enlarge)

The about screen verifies my findings, and a little snooping around will reveal some other new features that have only been introduced in Firefox 3. The most significant enhancement that I noticed would have to be the performance though. Immediately after starting up Flock it was using 66MB of memory which is a little on the high side, but it barely crawled above 100MB even after opening a dozen different tabs. Closing all of the tabs brought the memory usage back down to 82MB. This is like half the amount that the current version of Flock uses for me!

Kudos to the Flock team for jumping on the Firefox 3 bandwagon so quickly because it’s really going to pay off in the long run. I am very much anticipating the release of Flock 2.0 Beta in the coming weeks after they’ve had some time to polish-up the nightly builds, but if you’re feeling ambitious go ahead and try the latest nightly build of Flock 2.0.

Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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Twitter founder Jack Dorsey’s Squirrel project revealed… as the Square iPhone Payment System


Remember the Square iPhone Payment System we told you about back in August? If you’ll recall, the device — which involves an iPhone app and associated dongle — enables an iPhone or iPod touch to become a kind of mini credit card reader, allowing payments to be taken on the spot, no matter where you are or how big (or small) the transaction may be. When we’d first reported the device, word on the street was that it was only being alpha tested around New York City, and there wasn’t much else to say. Now, we may have a little more insight on just where this device is headed, and who’s behind the project.

Jack Dorsey, the man who all but built Twitter in a matter of two weeks, has been working on a half-secret start-up project since around May. His new venture — dubbed, funnily enough, Squirrel — is based around the concept of using the iPhone as… yep, a portable, personal cash register; essentially the exact device which Square has created. And that’s no accident. In the images we ran of the Square system, you can see a domain name on a receipt: squareup.com. Squareup.com is the domain of the Square System (obviously), and a casual investigation into the site’s WHOIS profile reveals registrant info that points to an office in San Francisco, and a contact email address which reads… billing@paybysquirrel.com. Square, squirrel, square… are you getting it? So the cat, er, squirrel appears to be out of the bag. Now the question is whether or not Dorsey and co. can turn this fairly obscure piece of tech into the kind of firestorm which Twitter has become — and who knows, maybe there’ll even be a business model this time.

[Thanks, Little Birdie]

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Twitter founder Jack Dorsey’s Squirrel project revealed… as the Square iPhone Payment System originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 17 Oct 2009 12:54:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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How would you change Nikon’s D3000?

Nikon’s D3000 launched under the long, dark shadow of the D300S, but for entry-level DSLR buyers, it has certainly remained a viable option. For those who passed on the D5000 and tossed their six bills towards this, we’re curious to see just how great / terrible it is at Nikon’s bottom rung. Are you still enjoying your cam? Do you wish you would’ve selected a higher-end model? Is the kit lens worth a darn? Feel free to spill your rant in comments below, and make it good — you never know when the D3000S or D4000 will hit the market.

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How would you change Nikon’s D3000? originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 16 Oct 2009 23:56:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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