Hasta La Gadget!

Tired of waiting for Verizon and dissatisfied with a series of recent buggy leaks, the fine folks at XDA Developers were determined to trade their Cupcake-laden Droid Eris for a more toothsome Eclair on their own terms. Yesterday evening, it seems they finally achieved their goal, though not without a caveat or three. If you’re still running the stock Android 1.5, it’s a simple matter of dropping a ZIP file onto your SD card and restarting your phone; if not, you’re completely out of luck. Rooters warn that the hack won’t work on phones that have already been flashed to that aforementioned Eris 2.1 leak, and that they haven’t yet figured out a way to restore any non-1.5 phones back to factory default. If hacking isn’t your daily bread, proceed with caution — Sense UI may be fancy and all, but chaining your phone forevermore to an unsupported OS just ain’t worth it. See what an Eris Eclair looks like after the break.

Continue reading Droid Eris rooted to 2.1, but look before you leap

Droid Eris rooted to 2.1, but look before you leap originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 16 Mar 2010 03:28:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Android Mobile OS  |  xda-developers  | Email this | Comments

You’ve pre-ordered your iPad, and you’re impatiently crossing off the days on the calendar until April 3. What can you do in the meantime, apart from obsessively refreshing your Google search to find articles like this one? What about some accessory shopping?

The iPad looks great, but it could also be improved with a few additions that will make it more useful, more often. Don’t worry, we don’t want you to spend much. Most of these picks are free, and all of them will improve your iPad. Here’s a list of what I’ll be buying (or making or downloading) for my iPad in the next few weeks.

A Ziploc Bag

When Jeff Bezos reads his Kindle in the bath, he seals it inside a one-gallon Ziploc bag. If you’re going to be using your iPad in the bath, or the slightly less hostile kitchen, you should do the same. You can see the screen, hear the (slightly muffled) music and generally relax. Amazingly, the multitouch will still work through the plastic. I tried it with my iPod touch a moment ago and it was like the plastic wasn’t there.

Price: around 35 cents

E-Book Software

Now that we know that the iPad will support the almost universal EPUB format, it’s time to prepare some books to load onto the device (as if you’ll be able to sit still enough to read a book for the first few days of your new toy). Many public domain titles can be downloaded in EPUB-form, notably from Project Gutenberg, but what you need is a piece of software to convert any and every text or PDF you can throw at it.

Calibre and Stanza are both E-Book conversion apps, and both work on OS X and Windows. Stanza partners our favorite iPhone e-reader of the same name, and does a good and simple job of conversions.

Calibre is a lot more powerful, and along with handling complex documents a lot better, it also stores your e-books in an iTunes-style library (although this will be moot when iTunes stores them for you). It will also download daily newspapers, free, along with many websites and any RSS feed you choose to add.

Price: Free

Calibre [Calibre]

Stanza [Lexcycle]

A Stylus

I have been ridiculing the poor Pogo Stylus for iPhone for a couple years now: Who wants a stylus on a phone designed not to need one? But with the iPad, the little hollow tube with a foamy metallic tip looks a lot more useful.

Combine the little pen with a big-screen iPad and some drawing or painting software and you have an amazing sketchbook. Most of us draw easier with a pen than with fingers (unless we are still in kindergarten), and the good-size screen, combined with an undo function, may even make the combo better than pencil and paper. The only downside is the lack of pressure sensitivity.

Price: $15

Pogo Stylus [Ten One Design]

A Case

This one might seem obvious, but I suspect many people are planning to buy the Wi-Fi iPad and leave it on the coffee-table or nightstand (or down the back of the couch). Don’t! This device begs to be thrown in a bag and taken with you, wherever you go. You can read, write, draw, paint, watch movies and all that stuff, all when you have a few minutes to spare. If you’re worried about scratching your precious iBaby, you’ll miss out.

Don’t, however, buy a laptop-style pouch, or anything that zips shut. You want easy, fast access or you’ll never take it out. At the very least, consider a slipcover. Better is a notepad or book-style cover, something that can be flipped open in a second, and preferably one that can double as a stand. Worried that it doesn’t offer protection from dust and spills? That’s what the Ziploc bag is for.

Price: Variable. Free if you use an old padded shipping envelope.

That Little iPad Camera Connection Dingus

If you have a camera and an iPad, you should buy the iPad Camera Connection Kit. Consisting of both an SD card-reader and a USB connection cable, the kit lets you load your photos onto the iPad without the computer middleman. Why would you care?

Think about what most of us do with our cameras. We take a lot of pictures of a day out, a family gathering or some other social event. Then we all crowd around the back to look at the tiny three-inch screen. Now think about the alternative: A 10-inch screen, pinch-to-zoom, a wide viewing angle, slideshows with transitions and music, plus an instant, in-the-field back up.

The iPad also supports RAW photos. That’s right. If you prefer to shoot your pictures now and ask your editing questions later, you’re not excluded from the iPad. Apple: “iPad supports standard photo formats, including JPEG and RAW.” This alone will make every pro photographer reading this article go out and order one now (here’s the pre-order page if you want it). I expect that there will soon be a lot of RAW photo-editing applications in the App Store, too, but for now, the ability to quickly view and edit pictures on a slim, portable device with a long battery life while shooting will be worth the money on its own.

Price: TBA

iPad Camera Connection Kit [Apple]

That’s my list. What about yours? Do you have a favorite Bluetooth keyboard, an awesome idea for a homemade stand or some weird use-case that nobody else has thought of? Hit us up in the comments.

See Also:

• Stanza v2.0: The iPhone's Best E-Reader Just Got Better
• Pogo Stylus: The Most Useless iPhone Accessory. Ever
• Leather Cases Turn iPad into a Book

Ziploc photo: tamakisono/Flickr

Okay, we’re in love with this delightfully evil Mattel Mindflex hack, which delivers an electric shock if you don’t remain calm, but we have to wonder: wouldn’t this thing be amazing if you hooked it up in reverse and punished not thinking enough? Video after the break.

Continue reading Mattel Mindflex hack shocks you into serenity

Mattel Mindflex hack shocks you into serenity originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 04 Mar 2010 17:11:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This article was written on March 02, 2007 by CyberNet.

There was no doubt that hackers would develop cracks to get Windows Vista illegally, but as it turns out a crack isn’t really needed. That’s because a new brute force method has been found that will continuously try product keys until Vista accepts one of them. At a rate of 20,000 keys per hour (480,000 per day) it might take a few hours or days to find one that works. Then, you’ll also have to see if you can activate the key, and if it doesn’t work you gotta keep trying. Yes, this can definitely become a daunting task.

What really worries me about this process is that it might take a valid key away from someone else who has actually purchased Windows Vista. That means when the user who legally bought Vista tries to activate the operating system it will tell them that it has already been activated on another PC. Then they will have to call Microsoft in order to resolve the issue.

The key generator download can apparently be found in this forum which does require you to register, but I didn’t want to register at the site to see for myself. A summary of how it works is on this page, but there are no download links available there.

I would expect to see a Windows Update become available shortly that limits the number of times a user can change their product key in a day’s time. Most people would never change their product key anyways, so not enforcing a daily limitation is something that Microsoft is probably kicking themselves for right now.

Source: Gizmodo and The Inquirer

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Related Posts:

Vista Keygen a Hoax…But a Real Crack Emerges!Microsoft Pushes Out Vista Exploit Detector UpdateVista Beta 2 Testers Will Get Vista RC1Vista Available For MSDN Subscribers 7 Days After RTMMicrosoft Windows Vista Build 5308

Okay, folks, you know the drill: here lies new hardware, may we see it hacked to run unintended software. Today’s contestant is Pandora, once thought to be relegated to the realm of vaporware and now in full production. One of the lucky, open source-friendly buyers decided that the native Linux distribution was just not for his liking, and instead opted for Google’s little green man mobile OS. Touchscreen support isn’t there yet, but you gotta start somewhere, right? Video of Android on Pandora after the break. Now we wait until the time we can gleefully say “Pandora (the app) on Android on Pandora” while we listen to some rocking streamed tunes.

Continue reading Android ported to Pandora, in the name of science or something

Android ported to Pandora, in the name of science or something originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 01 Feb 2010 07:12:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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