Hasta La Gadget!

The 8-Bit Pocket Camera App gives your photos a nostalgic, pixelated feel

8-Bit Pocket Camera App Wastes Your Smartphone’s Megapixels for Fun Photos
5-megapixel cameras, 8-megapixel cameras? Totally unnecessary—at least that’s what the makers of the 8-Bit Pocket Camera app want you to think. This $1 iOS app lets you take 200 x 200 tiffs reminiscent of the pictures (and quality) that the Game Boy Camera used to take back in the day (which were 128 x 112). The black and white pixilated pics you snap with this app can also be stylized, distorted, or enhanced with a border or different paper color, and will export as PNG files when emailed or posted online.

Recreate the Game Boy Camera with 8-Bit Pocket Camera App [Cult of Mac]

A Mouse That Doesn’t Click? My Ears Rejoice!
Click. Click click. Clickety clickclick click. For those who find themselves eternally irritated by the noise associated with every mouse button push, Nexus has a product for you: the Silent Mouse. It’s built with a patented switch that makes no sound when it’s clicked. The Silent Mouse is wireless, connecting to your notebook or PC via a nano receiver. It’s also got a button for selecting 1000 or 1600 DPI sensitivity, which is great for those who work on a large monitor.

Nexus Silent Mouse [Nexus via Slashgear]

Samsung Ships Notebooks With Keylogger Installed
The StarLogger keylogger program has been found preinstalled and active on two new Samsung laptops. The software logs every keystroke and takes screen caps, and can regularly email the data it collects without the user ever knowing this has been done. The affected laptops were purchased by Mohamed Hassan and detected when he installed security software. The first notebook that had the keylogger installed was eventually returned due to a driver issue; its replacement had the same keylogger program installed.

Samsung Installs Keylogger on its Laptop Computers [Network World via Geek.com]

Touchscreen Interface Simulates a Stretchy, Flexible Surface
Rather than just pinching to zoom and swiping to slide your position further along a screen, researchers at Osaka University have developed a touchscreen display that appears to flex, as if it were made of elastic material. So when you drag your finger to change what part of a map you’re viewing, for instance, the screen visually resists that movement, squishing and stretching the map’s proportions to keep your original position in perspective until you release your finger, almost like the map is printed on a sheet of rubber.

New Flex Touchscreen Interface Demonstrated Using Google Maps [Diginfo.tv via Crunchgear]

The PiCycle Electric Bike is Frowning at You
The PiCycle e-bike uses a 48V brushless DC motor to help power you up steep hills, across vast distances, or just on your daily commute. It can take you up to 20 miles without a single pedal on your part and reach speeds up to 30mph. Other featuers include an internal hub transmission, a beltdrive system, shifting on-the-fly, a suspension seat post, and hydraulic brakes. Its perfectly arched frame looks like a rainbow, or a frownie face.

PiCycle LTD Electric Bike [PiCycle via Uncrate]

Creative Coffee Table Is a Four-Person Pong Game
There’s no need for a coffee table in today’s world to be simply made of wood and just sit there. The coffee table is the perfect piece of furniture to transform into something interactive, like a four person game of pong played on a 30 x 30 matrix of red LEDs. Players use one of four knobs placed along each side to slide their bat left and right. The game can support up to 5 balls for more complicated play.

Super Pong Coffee Table [Instructables via Technabob]

Apple's new MacBook Pros have faster chips and a Thunderbolt port. Image courtesy Apple.

by Mark Brown, Wired UK

According to numerous forum threads on Apple’s official discussion boards, the latest fleet of MacBook Pro models is plagued with technical hiccups that have lead to lock-ups and freezes.

The issues, which some speculate derive from the graphics card, graphics driver or power management, cause the laptop to completely freeze up when under any kind of stress. Users have complained that when trying to render a clip in iMovie, play a game or use Adobe Flash the CPU temperature rockets and the unit locks up.

Some users believe that the problem is in the software, rather than hardware. Forum poster portergoodness says that he could get his MacBook Pro to reliably freeze in a matter of minutes by encoding a video, running Netflix and playing Civilization V at the same time. When he did the same test on Windows 7, the laptop ran the three processes without a hitch for half an hour.

If this is the case, it means Apple could solve the problem with a software update, rather than an expensive product recall. This isn’t the first time that Apple’s solved a technical glitch in this way — in 2010, a firmware update managed to fix intermittent flickering on iMac screens, and updated iOS builds have solved various Wi-Fi problems on the original iPad.

Polish forum poster Horniasty claims that Apple revealed, in a support phone call, “that they are sure that this is an firmware/driver related problem, not a hardware one, which raised my hope up a bit.” Apple hasn’t yet released an official statement on the subject.

Last week, the same forum erupted with claims that the new MacBook Pros were having trouble connecting with iTunes Home Sharing. Apple hasn’t acknowledged this issue either.

Apple, like most major hardware manufacturers, has a history of engineering issues. The iPhone 4 caused a frenzy in 2010, for example, when consumers realised that touching a specific point on the phone’s edge caused signal strength to tank. The firm called an emergency press conference and distributed free rubbery bumper-cases to all customers.

The technology giant currently has another problem on its hands with the iPad 2, thanks to a potentially defective screen that lets dots and rays of light bleed from around the edges. Once again, Apple hasn’t commented on those complaints.

This story was originally published on Wired UK: MacBook Pro users complain of hardware failures.

WebOS revolves around a user interface called "Cards." Hit the physical Home button, and each app currently running is displayed in a small Card window. Swipe left or right to switch between the Cards. Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

HP claims all its PCs will ship with the WebOS mobile operating system in addition to Microsoft’s Windows sometime next year, according to a report.

That’s an ambitious plan, considering that HP hasn’t even announced a ship date for the WebOS-powered TouchPad tablet yet.

The purpose of the expansion to PCs would be to entice software developers to build apps for the WebOS ecosystem, according to Bloomberg, which originally reported the story. If WebOS is on HP PCs in addition to tablets and smartphones, third-party developers would have a bigger audience for selling apps.

“You create a massive platform,” Leo Apotheker, HP’s new CEO, said in an interview buried deep inside a wordy Bloomberg story.

In terms of apps, HP’s WebOS definitely has some catching up to do. Apple’s iOS is nearing 400,000 apps in the App Store, and Google’s Android has about 250,000. HP’s WebOS has 6,000 apps.

HP acquired Palm last year for the WebOS smartphone operating system. Last month the company introduced the first tablet running WebOS, dubbed the TouchPad. The 9.7-inch tablet is very similar to Apple’s iPad. HP has not announced a price tag or a ship date for the TouchPad.

It’s no surprise that HP has plans to roll WebOS into PCs as well. Research firm DisplaySearch found that in the fourth quarter of 2010, Apple surpassed HP for the No.1  spot in the “mobile PC market,” when you combine sales of Mac notebooks with the iPad. So with the iPad included, Apple sold 10.2 million, or 17.2 percent of, mobile computers during the fourth quarter of 2010. HP shipped 9.3 million notebooks.

Apple is taking a very similar approach with its PCs. Steve Jobs has said the next version of the Mac operating system, OS Lion, will blend traits of iOS into OS X. Ahead of OS Lion’s release,  Apple has launched an App Store for the Mac.

In other words, HP is basically mimicking Apple’s verticalized mobile strategy by cultivating and expanding on an in-house mobile ecosystem rather than solely relying on Microsoft, which has not yet announced a credible tablet strategy.

See Also:

• Why WebOS Hasn’t Lived Up to Its Potential — Yet
• Report: HP’s WebOS Tablet Specs Leaked
• HP Launches WebOS-Powered Tablet, Phones
• WebOS Apps Stand Out Because There’s Less Competition

This article was written on July 09, 2007 by CyberNet.

Modern laptops continue to get more powerful and smaller in size, but we can’t forget about the predecessors that led to the notebooks that we have today. PCWorld put together an article outlining the top-10 most important laptops of all time where they outline the significance of each one. So what laptops made the list?

1. First True Laptop: Epson’s HX-20 (1981)
   This shipped with a flattering 50-hour battery, 614 Hz dual processors, 16K of RAM, and only weighed 3.5lbs! The LCD only showed four-lines of text at a time, which probably made gaming a little difficult.
   
2. First Popular Laptop: Tandy’s TRS-80 Model 100 (1983)
   Used four AA batteries to stretch out 18-hours of battery life, which wasn’t bad for a cost of just $800! There has been no confirmation, but this is supposedly the last system that shipped using code actually written by Bill Gates.
   
3. First Portable PC Running a 386 Processor: Compaq’s Portable 386 (1987)
   If you had the $12,000 to drop on this sucker you would walk away with a 20MHz chick magnet that had the 386 processor in it. Of course you better be in shape to lug this 20lbs machine around.
   
4. First Convertible Tablet: GRiD Systems’ 2260 (1992)
   Looks like Tablet PC’s have been around a little longer than you thought!
   
5. First Thin-and-Light Notebook: DEC’s HiNote Ultra (1994)
   A whopping 4MB of RAM, 340MB hard drive, trackball mouse, Windows 3.11, and just a mere 3.5lbs standing in at an inch thick.
   
6. First Notebook With a Touchpad: Apple’s PowerBook 520 (1994)
   Relief from the trackball mouse initially came from an Apple! I remember getting my hands on a touchpad when they were first developed (it was a Gateway laptop with trackball and touchpad), and my initial thought was how that would be successful. It seemed to be so inconvenient to use until you really started to get used to it.
   
7. First Laptop to Use a Lithium Ion Battery: Toshiba’s Portege T3400 (1995)
   Out with the Nickel-Metal Hydride and in with the Lithium Ion! You no longer had to worry about completely draining the battery because of the "memory effects" that plagued so many people. The introduction of the Lithium Ion battery 12-years ago brought a 4-hour battery life…which isn’t all that different than what we get today.
   
8. First Wireless-Enabled Laptop: Apple’s iBook (1999)
   External wireless cards are virtually non-existent these days since it is built-in to nearly every electronic device we use. I can hardly count all of the times I almost snapped my wireless card off of my laptop since it protruded so much out the side.
   
9. First Gaming Notebook: WidowPC’s Sting 917X2 (2005)
   This dual-core AMD X2 laptop might not be the battery lover you would like, but it sure makes going to LAN parties a little easier. Of course there still isn’t really a laptop that can match the gaming performance of a nice desktop.
   
10. First Serious PC Killer: Apple’s MacBook Pro (2006)
    Now that this can run both Windows and the Mac OS (using Boot Camp), it is quickly becoming the notebook choice for many users.
    

So there you have it…the top 10 most important laptops that have ever been released. For the most part I would say that I agree with them, but what I’m really looking forward to is hearing what you have to say about your experience with the older-generation notebook computers.

Drop a comment below and let us know what your first laptop computer was and what you thought about it!

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Apple's new MacBook Pros gained faster chips and a new connectivity standard. Image courtesy Apple.

Apple on Thursday refreshed the MacBook family with faster processors, more-powerful graphic cards and, most notably, a new connection port called Thunderbolt.

Ranging from 13 to 17 inches in screen size, the notebooks ship with the brand-new Thunderbolt connectivity standard that Apple co-developed with Intel.

Thunderbolt can transfer up to 10 Gbps, which is theoretically 12 times faster than the previous FireWire 800 connectivity standard. This is usually where you’d connect an external accessory such as a hard drive.

Apple has historically been nimble with pushing new connectivity standards. Apple created the FireWire connectivity standard before it became widely adopted in the PC industry.

The updated 13-inch MacBook Pros include Intel’s newer Core i5 and Core i7 chips, which were previously codenamed Sandy Bridge. Meanwhile, the 15- and 17-inch notebooks get quad-core Core i7 chips.

For anyone who cares, the MacBooks have updated graphic cards: the 13-inchers get the Intel HD Graphics 3000 chip; the 15- and 17-inchers have the AMD Radeon HD processor with up to 1GB of memory.

All the MacBook Pros have a reported battery life of 7 hours, according to Apple — lower than the previous generation, which got up to 10 hours battery life. This is presumably due to the speedier chips and graphic cards.

The MacBook Pros range from $1,200 to $2,500 and are available today at Apple retail stores or Apple.com.