Hasta La Gadget!

How are you killing the time until the Nexus S finally goes on sale? Google’s answer to that question has been a typically outlandish affair, involving seven Nexi, a collection of weather balloons, and another quest to see how much can be learned from a humble smartphone’s sensors when they’re shot to the edge of space. Yes, the Mountain View madmen fired a week’s worth of their latest and greatest smartphones through the Earth’s atmosphere, hoping to test both the durability and the information-gathering skills of the onboard compass, gyro, and accelerometer, while dedicated GPS modules were installed in each “shuttle” (made out of styrofoam beer coolers, if you can believe it) to help recover the cargo on its return to terra firma. So far, only six of the phones have been recovered — might this be another of Google’s crazy puzzles? A treasure hunt for an Android fallen from heaven? Video after the break.

Continue reading Google fires Nexus S into space, invites tenuous Galaxy S analogies (video)

Google fires Nexus S into space, invites tenuous Galaxy S analogies (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 14 Dec 2010 21:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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So this is how it was supposed to go: Best Buy would start selling the Nexus S in the States on December 16th, and Carphone Warehouse would follow on a few days later — the 20th, to be exact — in the UK. Looks like the British are going rogue here, though, because Samsung’s Gingerbread-packed slate is showing “in stock” on Carphone Warehouse’s site right this very moment, which should theoretically mean it ships the same day if you order it before 5PM local time. Let us know if you get it in your paws before the 20th, alright?

[Thanks, Daniel K.]

Nexus S in stock on Carphone Warehouse’s site a little early originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 14 Dec 2010 19:37:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s hard to believe this is what Android looked like two years ago. It’s a testament to how far it’s come that Android 2.3 Gingerbread is focused on making it feel good more than anything else. More »

This article was written on October 29, 2007 by CyberNet.

I absolutely love Google Talk because of its simplicity, and the fact that I’ve got all of my friends using it is a huge plus. There is only one thing that I really dislike with the instant messenger, and it’s that I can’t change my status to away.

A free program called gAlwaysIdle is looking to solve that problem. It provides an option in the Google Talk right-click menu that will let you always have your status set to away, whether or not your are using your computer:

It has three different modes that you can choose from:

• Normal Idle – Uses the default Google Talk settings
• Always Idle – You’re always set to idle
• Never Idle – Makes sure you are never set to away even when you’re not at your computer

As you can see from the screenshot above I was using this on Vista, but anytime I tried to change the status I got a fatal error. The only way to get around this is to run Google Talk as an administrator, or to disable the User Account Control (UAC) all together. My guess is that this program adjusts registry settings on-the-fly, and without the proper permissions in will crash and burn. As soon as I ran Google Talk as an administrator it worked as expected.

I wish that Google Would just implement this feature themselves … it would be so much easier.

gAlwaysIdle Homepage [via Life Rocks]

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Paul Buchheit created and served as the lead developer for Gmail. He also developed AdSense and is the guy who coined the company’s “Don’t be evil” motto. Bucheit left the company to found FriendFriend, which was later acquired by Facebook.

Since Google doesn’t sign his checks anymore, Buchheit can feel free to talk a bit of smack about the company’s current projects–projects like Chrome. Buchheit used his Twitter account this week to suggest the upcoming death of Google’s latest baby, “Prediction: ChromeOS will be killed next year (or ‘merged’ with Android).”

Buckheit went deeper in a FriendFeed post, writing,

ChromeOS has no purpose that isn’t better served by Android (perhaps with a few mods to support a non-touch display). I was thinking, “is this too obvious to even state?”, but then I see people taking ChromeOS seriously, and Google is even shipping devices for some reason.

Google has largely insisted that the two operating systems serve different markets. But, as TechCrunch points out, Sergey Brin himself has suggested that the company will someday focus on a single OS.