Dec 01

Add Flash to Your Old iPhone

Posted in: Apple, camera, flash, iPhone, Today's Chili

iFlash External Flash For iPhone & iPod - Click to enlarge.png

Have iPhone 4 envy? Your older model will never be as cool as the shiniest, newest version, but at least there’s one thing you can do to help soup the thing up. The iFlash plugs into your iPhone or iPod’s dock connector. It offers 10cd of light, to help you take better shots with your phone.

The iFlash has an on/off button and is powered by the phone itself. There’s also a string on the thing, so you can let it dangle from your phone, when not in use.

The iFlash is a bit pricey, at $39.95, and, let’s be honest, is a bit less exciting than it could be, given the addition of a flash on the latest version of the iPhone. But if you’ve got $40 and demand sharp phone pictures, you can pick one up today.

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Dec 01

Adobe Flash Player 10.2 beta arrives, expands hardware acceleration

Posted in: adobe, flash, Linux, Mac, Today's Chili, web, Windows

Adobe’s ubiquitous Flash Player has a new beta version out today that promises to complete the move to hardware acceleration of video played back using the web software. You’ll no doubt be aware that the current, non-beta Flash already does some offloading of video tasks to the GPU, but the new Stage Video API permits the entire workload to be shifted over, resulting in “just over 0 percent” CPU utilization when playing back 1080p clips. Should you doubt the veracity of Adobe’s bold new claims, the company’s set up some demo vids for you to test this out for yourself after downloading the beta — hit the source link to find out more. Windows, Mac and Linux machines are supported right out of the gate, while Microsoft gets an extra bone thrown its way with Internet Explorer 9 hardware acceleration also being implemented in this latest iteration of Flash. Full PR after the break.

Continue reading Adobe Flash Player 10.2 beta arrives, expands hardware acceleration

Adobe Flash Player 10.2 beta arrives, expands hardware acceleration originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 01 Dec 2010 02:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Nov 29

Osram’s New LED Camera Flash: Smaller, Brighter, Even-er

Posted in: flash, Phones, R&D and Inventions, Today's Chili

Osram, the lightbulb company, has come up with a bright new LED lamp for use in cellphones. Called the Oslux, it is 50% brighter than other LEDs, but more importantly for taking photographs, the light is flatter and “more evenly distributed”. This means that the light-falloff towards the edge, something common to regular and LED flashes alike, is reduced. This in turn gives a bigger patch of usable light.

The chip that does this all is smaller, too, at 2.5mm (shaved down from 3mm). How does it manage to be so bright? “New UX:3 chip technology that makes the LED capable of handling high currents.” That “high currents” part sounds like bad news for your cellphone battery.

Your photos will still be ugly, though, with washed-out faces and harsh shadows. Which brings me to a question about cellphone “flashes”. The lenses are tiny, so why not make a ring-flash that wraps around them? That way, shadows would be cancelled out (or, rather, filled in) and instead of bad snapshots you’d get a great fashion-shoot look to all your snaps. I’m serious. Why isn’t somebody doing this already?

The fancy Oslux lamps will find their way into cellphones as soon as a phone manufacturer decides it needs a new bullet-point on the feature-list.

Powerful LED flash for cell phones [Osram]

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Nov 29

Kingston HyperX Max 3.0 USB 3.0 SSD reviewed, hits ludicrous speeds

Posted in: external hard drive, ExternalHardDrive, flash, SSD, Today's Chili, Toshiba, usb 3.0, Usb3.0
Kingston HyperX Max 3.0 USB 3.0 HDD reviewed, hits ludicrous speeds

We’ve all seen the scene in some movie or another: secret agent infiltrates the enemy stronghold, sneaks into the server room, then fights off bad guy after bad guy while an agonizingly slow progress bar ticks across the screen, super-secret egg salad recipe files taking ages to copy. If only they had a Kingston HyperX Max USB 3.0 external drive they could have escaped without needing that big final fight scene. The drive was recently tested by PC Perspective and found to feature solid construction and performance, offering the highest sequential write speeds the site had ever seen thanks to a Toshiba HG2 controller coupled with 128GB of Toshiba flash and 128MB of DDR cache memory. And, at $280 for a 128GB model, it’s even somewhat reasonably priced — well, for an external USB 3.0 SSD, anyway.

Kingston HyperX Max 3.0 USB 3.0 SSD reviewed, hits ludicrous speeds originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 29 Nov 2010 02:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Nov 19

RIM’s Jim Balsillie says ‘you don’t need an app for the web,’ rejects Apple’s appification of the internet

Posted in: app, apps, blackberry playbook, BlackberryPlaybook, flash, playbook, RIM, sdk, Today's Chili, web

It’s no secret that RIM doesn’t exactly agree with Steve Jobs’ characterization of the company’s prospects, and Jim Balsillie has some more to say on the Apple vs. RIM front, particularly where it comes to apps. It’s hard to imagine RIM catching up with Apple’s 300,000+ apps, but Jim doesn’t think that’s the point: “We believe that you can bring the mobile to the Web but you don’t need to go through some kind of control point of an SDK, and that’s the core part of our message.” The statement was made at the Web 2.0 Summit a couple days ago, and on further prompting Jim made it clear he rejects Apple’s “appification” of the web. RIM’s strategy is obviously riding on highly portable Adobe AIR apps and Flash support in the browser (much like Microsoft’s Silverlight app strategy for Windows Phone 7), and we look forward to seeing just how well that playbook plays out in the PlayBook. Of course, “there’s not an app for that, but our browser is fully capable of performing that functionality” isn’t quite so catchy…

RIM’s Jim Balsillie says ‘you don’t need an app for the web,’ rejects Apple’s appification of the internet originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 19 Nov 2010 15:24:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Nov 17

PlayBook Smokes iPad Browser in Blackberry Speed-Test Video

Posted in: BlackBerry, flash, ipad, playbook, RIM, Tablets and E-Readers, Today's Chili

RIM has released a video pitching the upcoming PlayBook tablet against the current iPad, and it’s pretty impressive. Clearly the tests were chosen to favor RIM’s own device, but even so, it beats the iPad handily in each one.

Loading a regular webpage, for example, sees the PlayBook finished with everything, rendering and all, while the iPad still ticks along. Next, it’s on to Flash, which the iPad doesn’t do at all. Smartly, RIM chose to use a non-video serving site (in this case Adidas) as most video providers offer iPad-compatible streams as an alternative to Adobe’s proprietary plugin. Even so, the animation on the Flash site stutters noticeably (this is probably Flash’s fault, not the PlayBook’s).

Then we move to Javascript and HTML5, and while the example shown clearly favors the PlayBook, there are plenty of sites where the iPad works great.

Still, the raw rendering speed of the PlayBook’s browser is obvious, and the Flash support will make it useful for browsing restaurant websites on the go (why do all restaurant sites use Flash?). RIM must be proud. It must also be aware that the PlayBook won’t be out until next year, when it will be up against the iPad 2, not the current iPad.

BlackBerry PlayBook and iPad Comparison: Web Fidelity [Blackberry YouTube Channel]

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Nov 16

Adobe CEO: Flash battery life depends on hardware acceleration, MacBook Air update in testing right now

Posted in: adobe, Apple, breaking news, BreakingNews, flash, macbook, macbook air, MacbookAir, Today's Chili

Getting a little more oomph out of your MacBook Air after giving Flash the boot? Adobe’s Shantanu Narayen stopped just short of saying that’s Apple’s fault for not handing Adobe a device ahead of time. We asked the CEO what the greater battery life sans flash in Apple’s new laptop meant for the platform vis-a-vis HTML5 at the Web 2.0 Summit just a few minutes ago. He said it’s really all about optimizing for silicon: “When we have access to hardware acceleration, we’ve proven that Flash has equal or better performance on every platform.” You wouldn’t be blamed for thinking that sentence a cop-out, but that’s actually not the case — the chief executive says they’ve presently got a Macbook Air in the labs and have an optimized beta of Flash for the device presently in testing.

Adobe CEO: Flash battery life depends on hardware acceleration, MacBook Air update in testing right now originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 16 Nov 2010 12:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Nov 10

Fox.com joins NBC, ABC and CBS by blocking Google TV

Posted in: Android, flash, Google, GoogleTv, streaming, Today's Chili, TV

Looks like Fox has finally made a decision, following the other major networks, Hulu and several cable channels by opting to block streaming video on its website from Google TV devices. Blocking by Flash ID is the order of the day and takes simple browser workarounds out of play, so unless users want to go the PlayOn route, there’s large swaths of legitimate video on the web that’s now inaccessible. This same type of blocking is likely to affect other devices like the Boxee Box that launches tonight, so prepare for a bit more preening by the “get an HTPC!” crowd while fans of dedicated media streamers will have to look elsewhere for video to feed their hardware.

Fox.com joins NBC, ABC and CBS by blocking Google TV originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 10 Nov 2010 18:12:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Nov 10

Samsung Galaxy Tab Review: A Pocketable Train Wreck [Video]

Posted in: Android, flash, galaxy, review, samsung galaxy tab, tab, Today's Chili, top

This is it. The Galaxy Tab is the first Android tablet meant for humans. But is it actually fit for humans? No. More »

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Nov 10

Blackberry Boss: Playbook will Cost ‘Under $500′

Posted in: BlackBerry, flash, playbook, Tablets and E-Readers, Today's Chili

Blackberry’s Playbook tablet will go on sale in the first quarter of next year for “under $500″, according to Blackberry co-CEO Jim Balsillie. Speaking to Bloomberg, he said that the 7-inch tablet “will be very competitively priced.”

$500 seems to be the limit for non-Apple tablets, and if this is a real price and not just a spoiler to stop be-suited business-types from buying an iPad in the next few months, then it will join the Samsung Galaxy Tab in the marketplace for undersized tablets. This $500 is actually a surprise, as Blackberry is selling the Playbook as a business machine, and we were expecting a high price to match.

The trouble is, $500 is still too much. How can you charge essentially the same price as Apple does for the iPad, but for a machine with a half-sized screen? Worse, Blackberry isn’t exactly known for it’s third-party apps, and choosing the horrible Adobe Air runtime won’t help.

The Playbook might support Flash, but that is increasingly irrelevant as more sites switch to where the money is and serve iPad-friendly HTML5 video.

It’s getting hard to see who will buy the Playbook. And remember: by the time it actually limps into stores, the iPad 2 will be either available or imminent.

RIM to Sell Tablet for Less Than $500 to Take on IPad [Bloomberg]

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