Hasta La Gadget!

We’ve been waiting an awful long time for this day to come, and now we’re doing our darndest to rush away 2010. Today, Sir Richard Branson officially took the wraps off of a spacecraft that we initially peeked back in June of 2008: the SpaceShipTwo. Designed to hold six passengers and two pilots, this magnificent craft will reportedly be ready to ship wealthy tourists into space as early as 2011. Reportedly, the craft will be taken up to launch altitude by the WhiteKnightTwo, after which the 2.5 hour tour will take patrons high enough to experience around 5 minutes of weightlessness. Of course, the ship still has an awful lot of regulatory passing to do, and the Spaceport America in New Mexico still has to be built, but it’s nothing short of fantastic to see the wheels turning in the right direction. Just think — you can finally tell you kid that an aeronautical engineering degree isn’t required to leave the atmosphere. Future, we heart thee.

P.S. – Peek that MSNBC link for the unveiling shots!

Virgin Galactic reveals SpaceShipTwo, plans commercial space flights in 2011 originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 07 Dec 2009 13:57:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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With more and more phones featuring beefy processors, GPS, HSPA data, and compasses, augmented reality apps are ready to take off in a big way. Layar, in particular, is shaping up to be the platform of choice from which to overlay information onto the streets that surround you. This is great for serendipitous discovery of cafes, ATMs, real estate, and even jobs, but at what expense? Recently, we casually joked about the ability to “hunt down tweeps with cold, calculated precision.” Now a Dutch crew from Beste Product took up the task by giving Layar and its “Famous People Finder” feature a real-world test on the streets of Amsterdam with the help of Samsung’s i7500 Galaxy. The results are unsettling as demonstrated by the celebrities, including Brad Pitt’s, reaction to being discovered. Is our near-term future to be filled with people laughing maniacally while pointing their cellphones at each other? The video is in Dutch, but the reaction that unfolds at 2 minutes and 40 seconds is universally human. See it after the break.

[Via @Dutchcowboy]

Continue reading Video: The unsettling truth about our augmented reality future, starring Brad Pitt

Video: The unsettling truth about our augmented reality future, starring Brad Pitt originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 11 Sep 2009 07:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We just caught a glimpse of a white / silver Samsung Galaxy yesterday, but it looks like any doubts about its realness have now been put to rest, as the very same Android-based phone has now been spotted in the wild. As you might expect, however, there’s apparently no other differences compared to the standard black Galaxy we’ve been seeing all along and, just like the black model, this one will reportedly be available first on O2 Germany before rolling out to other carriers in Europe. And, no, there’s still no word of a release ’round here.

Filed under: Cellphones

White Samsung Galaxy spotted in the wild originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 05 Aug 2009 14:12:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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While the shuttle Endeavour is having a tough time getting off of the launch pad, the Apollo 11 moon mission should proceed as scheduled later this week. Some 40 years after Neil Armstrong and a host of behind-the-scenes workers at NASA made JFK’s vision a reality, WeChooseTheMoon.org is being launched to recreate the whole spectacle. Starting a full 90 minutes prior to the 40th anniversary (that’s 8:02AM on July 16th), the site will be fully operational, tracking the capsule’s route from Earth to the moon. Reportedly, visitors will be able to peek “animated recreations of key events from the four-day mission, including when Apollo 11 first orbits the moon and when the lunar module separates from the command module.” If you’re one of those who remembers “exactly where you were on that fateful day,” you should probably queue up a Google alert and bookmark your browser to relive the whole experience again.

Filed under: Transportation

Apollo 11 moon mission to be recreated on the web originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 13 Jul 2009 09:19:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The HTC Hero and T-Mobile myTouch 3G aren’t the only Android phones making waves this week: the Samsung Galaxy GT-I7500 also launched on O2 Germany, and this is the first unboxing we’ve seen. Continuing the confusion over what handsets actually get the full Google blessing, this version of the I7500 runs pretty much bone-stock Android, but isn’t a “Google Experience” phone, which in this case apparently means that firmware updates have to be loaded manually over USB instead of being pushed over the air. If you’re keeping track, that’s now a third axis of differentiation between Google-branded Android handsets and everything else, and we’re starting to think no one really knows what all the rules and differences actually are — hey, Eric, maybe you could set down that BlackBerry for a minute and sort all this out?

Filed under: Cellphones

Samsung Galaxy GT-I7500 unboxed, “Google Experience” distinction now clear as mud originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 10 Jul 2009 12:41:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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