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At last we can buy individual issues in Comics with minimal fuss!
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Along with Cloud Player, Amazon also launched Cloud Drive, which is basically just like any other cloud storage digital locker. It's not particularly feature rich, and there's no real reason to use it over something like SugarSync or SkyDrive -- it does work outside the US, however.
Its primary purpose, as far as we're concerned, is that it stores your your Cloud Player music in a subdirectory. You get 5GB of Cloud Drive storage for free, and then it's $1 per gigabyte per year if you need more space.
The Amazon Cloud Player itself will not, to put it bluntly, blow your mind. It works, but it's very much an early, and possibly rushed, release. Let's dive in to the Web and Android players for a closer look.
If you want to upload music, you need to grab the Amazon MP3 Uploader, which is a simple Adobe AIR program. As soon as you open it, it starts scanning your entire hard drive for music -- but you can stop it with a click and specify which directories you want to upload. The uploader is simple, but very easy to use.
Beyond streaming music from your Web browser, you can also download songs from Cloud Player for local playing. To download more than one song at a time, you need to grab the Amazon MP3 Downloader -- and when that runs, it automatically opens Windows Media Player or iTunes, and imports your downloaded music.
In essence, you can log into Cloud Player from any Web-connected PC and download your DRM-free MP3s -- cool.
Unfortunately, the Android player itself is lackluster. If you're used to Winamp, you'll find Amazon's offering eunuch-like in its functionality. That's not to say Cloud Player for Android sucks -- it works just fine -- but it only plays music. It doesn't scrobble to Last.fm, and there's no way to make a playlist that mixes both on-device and in-the-cloud music, nor can you search both storage locations at the same time. There is a simple home screen widget, though -- and it looks like the player automatically downloads album art, too.
The most annoying feature is that the Android player automatically fades in and out when you start/stop songs, and when switching between tracks -- and there's no way to disable it! The overall feeling is that Cloud Player for Android is most definitely 1.0, or even beta, software.
Fortunately, Cloud Player does one thing very well: it lets you download single MP3s or entire albums directly to your phone. You could do this while sitting at home on a high-speed Wi-Fi link, or over 3G/4G if you have the traffic allowance. Once the MP3s are on your phone, you can of course use a proper player like Winamp.
Hopefully, in the next few months, Amazon will simply enable Cloud Player for those unfortunate souls that aren't lucky enough to live in the US.
While none of Amazon's new cloud-based smartphone-oriented services are earth shatteringly awesome, there's no avoiding the fact that they're polished, easy to use, and free. It now becomes a question of whether Amazon's consumer might will be enough to take a bite out of the entrenched Android Market -- and more importantly, whether Amazon's early launch will be enough to stymie the growth of Apple's upcoming MobileMe and Google Music.
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Unlike other conferences at which keynote speakers hold the floor for an hour or more, the Web 2.0 Expo cycles them through in rapid-fire succession, giving each about 10 to 15 minutes to make their points. Some speakers manage to drive home important tips and pointers for the industry in the short time they're given; for others, the speech begins to resemble a 10-minute ad.
At first glance, the Web 2.0 conference, being held at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, appears tailor-made for today's audience.
Keynotes are kept short -- about 20 minutes each -- and follow each other in rapid-fire succession. They're posted on the Web. The audience is mainly young and armed with multiple mobile devices -- several had smartphones and iPads, for instance.
However, things came to a screeching halt when the keynote presenters got on stage to make their presentations Tuesday.
Most of the speakers did the usual keynote dance -- provide an extended sales pitch about their company and its super-awesomeness. Some just babbled.
More on these later. Perhaps the only speech that had really useful advice was the one given by Jessica Mah, CEO and a cofounder of inDinero.
Entrepreneurs struggling to get their companies off the ground should disregard advice given by angel investors, Mah told an audience of about 300 people at the conference.
Here's her back story: While studying computer science at the University of California at Berkeley, she had built a prototype for inDinero and recruited some users, then approached angel investors for funding.
Her company was set up to help business owners monitor the financial health of their companies
"All the angel investors told us to get more users and they might invest in us," Mah said.
That didn't seem to make sense to her.
"I thought we wouldn't necessarily make money even if we got millions of customers," Mah said. "We started tracking our customers and found nobody was coming back to our site. So we were trying to figure out what they needed."
Then someone told her that inDinero without financial accounts "is as useless as Facebook is without friends," Mah said.
"I felt a little misled by angel investors who told us to focus on user acquisition because that wasn't any help to us at all," Mah groused.
That's the same lesson GM learned a long time ago: Relying on bean counters can run your business into the ground.
Bean counter Hal Varian, chief economist at Google (Nasdaq: GOOG), spent the 20 minutes of his keynote speech proving how valuable Google is to the world.
There was some math involved and an equation or two rose moaning above the churning morass briefly, but it got lost in the verbiage.
Essentially, here's what Varian told the audience after blending the numbers: Google advertisers get back about seven times what they spend in the value of ad clicks and organic clicks.
The total value in the United States to advertisers and publishers and nonprofits is US$54 billion.
Now that search engines have made search easier, users ask more questions, including nonsensical ones. After weeding out the nonsensical ones -- and those that are just queries and hence unanswerable -- Varian went to work.
Taking average hourly earnings at $22 and doing complicated things with the time saved doing online searches and the number of questions asked per day, Varian showed that each person saves $1.37 a day by searching online.
Multiply that by the 130 million people employed and we find out we saved $65 billion a year.
Whooptido. Who exactly makes $22 an hour? And how much money do we waste daily by asking stupid questions on Google Search?
The concept of user experience took center stage during a keynote from Christian Crumlish, director of consumer experience at AOL, and Erin Malone, a partner at Tangible UX.
The audience learned that you can't slap a user interface on at the last minute. It takes vision, and Steve Jobs would be the ideal candidate to push that vision. The user must have a great experience, and bringing in a user experience expert can save the day.
Nothing concrete was presented. "We're the Sonny and Cher of keynotes," Crumlish said at the beginning of their presentation. Nope, guys, you were more like Tom and Jerry -- you interacted well and were funny, but provided the audience nothing of real substance.
Somewhat more concrete information was provided by David Messenger, executive vice president for online and mobile at American Express, in his keynote.
Mobile penetration, social networking, 3G and 4G rollouts and new technologies are driving the growth of digital payments, Messenger said.
Messenger outlined a few more must-haves for success in the digital payments market -- it's all about scale, you have to bridge online and offline, you must have an open platform, you must deal with partners, you must have security and trust, and you must deliver good service.
Then he lightly mentioned the Serve mobile payments platform American Express (NYSE: AXP) unveiled Tuesday, plugged it lightly and took off.
Note to other keynote speakers: Try to combine information that's acceptable with a low-key sales pitch like Messenger did. The audience will love you for it.
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Following the awful earthquakes and devastating tsunami that hit Japan, it is good to hear that Japanese carrier Softbank are offering assistance to children that were left orphaned by the recent disaster, including free replacements for any damaged iPhones.
Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son has announced via twitter that all earthquake orphans will receive free phones with all calling costs waived until they reach 18 years old. This offer is even extended to those on other networks such as DoCoMo.
We say well done Softbank and in particular Mr Son!
[Engadget]
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The Nintendo 3DS: Soon To Achieve Greatness �
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Samsung gets tabby
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As you may have guessed from the name, you're a bison (not a burrito, though). In the course of your day-to-day grocery shopping, you're abducted into a bag of gummy bears, and must now fend for yourself.
At the beginning of each round you launch yourself onto the marching gummy (gummi?) bears, while you're being watched by a huge crowd of even more gummy bears. Your goal is to keep bouncing on the bears and earn more and more money while you do it. Every time you hit a gummy bear, you lose some momentum. If you hit the floor, you basically lose all of it.
But don't give up just yet! You have an emergency thrust which you can use to gain some momentum and keep bouncing on those bears. This extra thrust gets refilled as you hit more bears.
There are also special gummy bears that give you extra thrust or extra money. The money comes in handy at the end of each round, when you can shop for cool stuff to make your bison even more effective against those gummy bears.
It's a fun and colorful game that kept my interest for quite some time, and almost sent me running to the closest store to get some gummy bears!
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Google has updated its search app for iPhone with a new interface, as well as the addition of Google Goggles. The slide'n'swipe interface features an interesting way of arranging menu items, yet the slide action feels jerky. Like its original version, the app can take you to a long list of Google Apps, yet it throws the user over to Safari rather than using the app's built-in browser, which might be smoother.
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Google Search, an app from Google, is available for free at the App Store.
Google Search
Originally, Google Search for iPhone was little more than a polished little app-sized link to its Web pages. So much of what people use Google for takes place through a browser that there wasn't much point in delivering a heavy piece of software; a well-put-together set of roadsigns did the trick.
Now Google's iPhone app has grown up a bit. It received an update that makes its main interface a little more complex, delivers a few new features, and builds in some slidey-swipey action to lessen the impression that you're looking at a made-for-mobile website rather than an installed application.
Underneath that, though, you're still looking at a browser that's looking at Google -- not that there's anything wrong with that. Its appearance is customized to fit the iPhone screen, and it makes Google's many smartphone utilities a little easier to find. Some of the changes, however, still feel a little rough.
Open the Google iPhone app for the first time and you'll get a quick tutorial. The familiar Google homescreen is there in the upper half of the screen, as well as a search bar, a cog icon for settings, a mic icon for voice searches and a camera icon to fire up Google Goggles. At the bottom is a button for Google Apps -- Docs, Orkut, Buzz (yep!), Reader and the like.
Type something into the search bar, and it'll conduct a standard Google search. But you can refine that search by giving it a left-to-right swipe. This reveals a sidebar where you can select which specific part of Google to search in. Default is Everything, but there's also News, Images, Videos, Blogs, etc.
You can also swipe top-to-bottom to bring the main Google search page back into view.
This interface arrangement is a bit unusual -- I can't name another app I've ever seen that arranges its menus quite like this. Its concept makes plenty of sense, but using it on an iPhone 4, it feels kind of jerky. Swiping down to get the half-screen Google start page is sometimes interpreted by the app as an attempt to enter text into the top search bar. Side-swipes to get to the various search categories is sometimes ignored if the gesture was just a little on the fast-and-sloppy side. It seemed to require a much more deliberate sweep of the finger than, for instance, the Kindle iPhone app needs to turn a page. This may be due to the fact that this app gets almost all of the data it's showing you from the Web, rather than the phone's internal storage, but the effect feels decidedly rough sometimes.
One of the most attractive features of Google's iPhone app has always been voice search -- hit a mic icon, tell it what you're searching for, and your words are turned into text and entered into the search bar. It still works the same as it ever has: very well.
But next to the mic icon is now a camera icon for using Google Goggles. This is a feature with which anything you photograph can be sent to Google to get relevant information. Instead of putting words into the search bar, you're putting in a photo.
Of course, it doesn't work with just anything. Google says it's best used on books and DVDs, landmarks, logos, contact info, art, businesses, products and barcodes. It can also translate text.
I snapped images from the covers of a few CDs (yeah, I've still got some of those). Goggles identified the album by name and did a product search, a search for videos from the same artist, and some really weird textual search that made no sense at all.
Language translation is very hit and miss, but it seems short sentences work more often than big blocks of text.
Finally, at the very bottom of the Google app's home screen, there's an icon for Apps, which will give you a menu for taking you directly to any of over a dozen Google Web apps you happen to use -- News, Gmail, Docs, Voice, Photos, YouTube, etc. This list is probably familiar to you if you've used Google's older version of the Search app. You'll need to sign in to some of these apps using a Google username and password (typically an "@gmail.com" email account), but the phone can be set to remember this and automatically log you in. Just don't lose the phone.
If you're looking to find quick access to the general Google News front page, this is where you find it. The News option in the slide-to-the-side bar on the Search page simply narrows the search term you enter down to a Google News search specifically.
It's good to have quick access to all these Google Apps within the overall iPhone app. It would certainly seem strange if they weren't there at all. Still, it seems a lot of the apps listed here could just as easily be situated on one's iPhone home screen, or placed into folders that would categorize them more practically than through their shared Google lineage. Maps is here, but the iPhone's own Maps app uses Google Maps, and it's tied more closely into the other functions of the phone. The iPhone's Calendar app can be synced with Google Calendar, as can Mail with Gmail. Google Voice is available in the App Store. And pretty much anything else here can be saved as a shortcut icon. Why go through Google Search for iPhone when direct access is so easy?
Also, none of these Google Apps are accessed through the browser built into the main search app. All those search functions I described earlier are conducted and executed by a version of Safari that's been embedded into the app itself. But if you fire up one of these Google Apps (an app within an app, I guess), it kicks you over to Safari in order to get into your Docs account or check out some YouTube videos.
That certainly doesn't limit the actual functionality of the Google Apps themselves. But it does trip you up if you intend to back-track afterward and do some completely different task in the Google Search iPhone app, which has now been shunted into your multitask bar and must be resurrected through a double-tap on the Home button.
Yeah yeah, I know how much of a whiner I sound like for grousing about having to push a physical button (twice -- and don't forget tapping the icon too!) in order to get back on track. But Facebook's and Twitter's official iPhone apps make good use of in-app browsers that let you seamlessly slide back and forth between information on the wild Web and data contained within the app. And Google Search for iPhone has a built-in browser already -- it just doesn't use it for anything called up in its Google Apps section. Unless there's some technical hurdle that makes it impractical, I think using the in-app browser for Google Apps might be a welcome improvement to Google Search for iPhone.
Since Day 1, Google Search for iPhone has been worth a space on the iPhone's main screen just by virtue of its Voice Search, which is still top-notch and still very easy to access the second you boot up the app.
With this latest update, it's starting to add a little more finesse to the interface and bring in new features. Google Goggles is interesting, and the slidy-swipy characteristics now built into the main screen have potential, if only they didn't feel so choppy.
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Things have gotten so heated, in fact, that complaints have apparently been made to the US Department of Justice. They may have something to do with allegations of Google holding back Verizon handsets with Microsoft's Bing on board, ostensibly in an effort to trip up its biggest search competitor. Another major dissatisfaction expressed by those working with Android code is that Google needs an advance preview of what is being done in order to give it the green light -- which, as noted by a pair of sources familiar with Facebook's Android customization efforts, isn't sitting well with people at all. Google and Facebook are direct competitors in the online space and it's easily apparent how much one stands to gain from knowing the other's plans early. As to the non-fragmentation clauses in licenses, Andy Rubin has pointed out those have been there from the start, but it's only now that Google is really seeking to use them to establish control. The future of Android, therefore, looks to be a little less open and a little more Googlish -- for better or worse. As Nokia's Stephen Elop puts it:
"The premise of a true open software platform may be where Android started, but it's not where Android is going."
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All iOS 4.3.1 jailbreaks are still tethered, meaning you'll have to jailbreak your device after every reboot. An untethered jailbreak is slated for release sometime in the next week -- but 4.3 was meant to have an untether, too, and that never emerged.
Maybe Apple's updated security mechanisms will finally keep hackers at bay!
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As you may have guessed from the name, you're a bison (not a burrito, though). In the course of your day-to-day grocery shopping, you're abducted into a bag of gummy bears, and must now fend for yourself.
At the beginning of each round you launch yourself onto the marching gummy (gummi?) bears, while you're being watched by a huge crowd of even more gummy bears. Your goal is to keep bouncing on the bears and earn more and more money while you do it. Every time you hit a gummy bear, you lose some momentum. If you hit the floor, you basically lose all of it.
But don't give up just yet! You have an emergency thrust which you can use to gain some momentum and keep bouncing on those bears. This extra thrust gets refilled as you hit more bears.
There are also special gummy bears that give you extra thrust or extra money. The money comes in handy at the end of each round, when you can shop for cool stuff to make your bison even more effective against those gummy bears.
It's a fun and colorful game that kept my interest for quite some time, and almost sent me running to the closest store to get some gummy bears!
Tags: burrito, burrito bison, flash, fun, game, gummi bears, GummiBears, gummy bear, GummyBear, time waster, time-waster, time-wasters, TimeWaster, web
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Microsoft tested Chrome 10, Firefox 4, IE9, Opera 11, and Safari 5 in the following scenarios:
Unfortunately, it's also significantly more complicated. The IE bloggers state: "We focused on making IE fast - the quicker a browser can perform an action the less power the browser will consume. We focused on using modern PC hardware to accelerate IE - natively using the specialized hardware decreases power consumption. We focused on idle resource usage - the browser shouldn?t be doing work and consuming power when the user isn?t interacting with the browser. And we focused on following device power management guidance - the browser should respect the guidance of the hardware manufactures."
The first assumption?namely that faster calculation saves power?is far from universally true. It's also important to isolate what plugins or third-party utilities might be causing Browser A to draw far more power than Browser B. The authors themselves note that Opera uses markedly more power than any other browser in one test because "Opera changes the system timer resolution from the default 15.6ms to 2.5ms which prevents the CPU from entering low power states." This type of error makes it difficult to draw an apples-to-apples comparison, though it presumably also pressures Opera (or any browser developer) to patch their code.
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Here are some of the goodies version 0.7 brings to the party:
Zen Coding has official implementations for a ton of editors, including TextMate, Apatana, Coda, E2, Komodo, Notepad++, PSPad, and more. It also has unofficial builds for Vim, UltraEdit, Visual Studio and more.
If you want to play with Zen Coding without installing it, you can use the online demo to see some of its magic in action.
Tags: code, developer, developers, html, productivity, source, utilities, web, zen coding
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Vimeo has released an iPhone app that allows you upload, edit, manage and watch your videos right from your iPhone. Here are some of the highlights:
If you pick this one up, let us know what you think!
[Free - iTunes link]
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Custom Huawei Ascend brings the thrill of the cage to the palm of your hand with pre-loaded, exclusive TapouT training content and new TapouT application
DALLAS, March 30, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- MetroPCS Communications, Inc., in partnership with SA Studios Global, today introduced the Huawei Ascend Sanctioned by TapouT, a special-edition handset designed in conjunction with Mixed Martial Arts ("MMA") and lifestyle brand TapouT, an Authentic Brands Group company. The phone will be available exclusively at MetroPCS stores and online within the next few weeks.
The Huawei Ascend Sanctioned by TapouT comes with two interchangeable backs and is pre-loaded with a full content suite featuring TapouT static and live wallpapers, TapouT Virtual Training center videos and a new TapouT application exclusively available on the phone.
Finished in high gloss black with matte black casing, the Huawei Ascend Sanctioned by TapouT features the iconic TapouT logo emblazoned on the back of both covers, one in tonal black and the other in dark grey with the cage graphic frequently seen on TapouT merchandise. The handset is powered by Android? 2.2 (Froyo), features a large 3.5 inch touchscreen and a 3.2 megapixel auto-focus camera and camcorder, and comes with a 2GB microSD? memory card.
The Huawei Ascend Sanctioned by TapouT is available with MetroPCS' smartphone service plans at $50 and $60 a month, including all applicable taxes and regulatory fees. Both plans offer unlimited talk, text and Web services for about half the cost of other carriers' smartphone plans today, along with Metro USA(SM) nationwide coverage covering more than 90 percent of the U.S. population.
"The TapouT brand is admired by MMA fans around the world, and we're proud to offer consumers a unique and personalized handset that carries the energy and radical design for which TapouT is known," said Phil R. Terry, senior vice president of corporate marketing for MetroPCS. "Special edition handsets are one of the ways that we're giving consumers the devices, services and features that are a perfect fit with their lifestyles and interests."
TapouT is the most recognizable brand in the MMA world. Founded in 1997 by Charles "Mask" Lewis Jr., Dan "Punkass" Caldwell and Tim "SkySkrape" Katz in California, the three made t-shirts and sold them at local gyms and MMA events. The brand rapidly became the de-facto brand worn by MMA fans throughout the U.S. and now has global distribution sponsoring a number of top athletes including Ryan Bader and Jake Shields.
"When we started TapouT, the goal was to create a brand that captured the true essence and lifestyle of MMA fans. Today, the mobile phone is the most important piece of technology that we own, and is an extension of the owner's personality. TapouT fans now have a handset that reflects their lifestyle and the latest technology on the market. The value that MetroPCS offers consumers is unmatched in the industry and was an obvious choice for us," said Caldwell, co-founder of TapouT.
Cross-Country Tour
To celebrate the launch, Punkass and SkySkrape will travel across the country on the TapouT bus to visit MetroPCS stores and host The Ultimate Fighter? watching parties. A full schedule of locations and dates can be found at www.metropcs.com/TapouT. Additionally, customers who purchase the phone will be able to redeem 20 percent off gear and apparel at www.TapouT.com and enter to win an all-expenses-paid trip to Las Vegas to watch the finale of The Ultimate Fighter? with Punkass and SkySkrape.
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Scientists at MIT have created what may be the first practical artificial leaf -- a device about the size of a playing card capable of splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen and storing the energy in a fuel cell. Placing the leaf it in a single gallon of water in sunlight could produce enough electricity to supply a house in developing countries with its daily electricity requirement, according to researchers.
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A team of scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has developed what it describes as the first practical artificial leaf.
The device, made from silicon, electronics and catalysts, is the same size and shape as a playing card, but thinner.
It splits water into its two components, hydrogen and oxygen. These are then stored in a fuel cell and used later to generate electricity.
"It's really cool stuff -- they're taking a solar cell and turning it into a battery," Carl Howe, director of anywhere consumer research at the Yankee Group, told TechNewsWorld.
"You can think of this as the first dark solar energy because it'll give you solar energy at night in the form of light," Howe added.
Daniel Nocera, who led the team of scientists that developed the artificial "leaf," was not available for comment at press time.
Placing the artificial leaf it in a single gallon of water in bright sunlight could produce enough electricity to supply a house in developing countries with its daily electricity requirement, Nocera has claimed.
Much research has been conducted on the concept of an artificial leaf. Technically, the first artificial leaf was developed more than 10 years ago by John Turner of the U.S. National Renewable Energy Lab in Boulder, Colo.
However, Turner's device used rare, expensive materials and was highly unstable.
Nocera's device uses inexpensive materials that are widely available. It can use water from any source and is highly stable. He has shown that a prototype of his leaf in the laboratory operated continuously for at least 45 hours without a drop in activity.
Nocera has been working on this project for some time. Back in 2008 he worked with postdoctoral fellow Matthew Kanan to develop a process that would use sunlight to split water into hydrogen and oxygen.
The process was based on the researchers' creation of a new catalyst consisting of cobalt, phosphates and an electrode.
When placed in water and electricity from any source is run through the electrode, the catalyst produces oxygen. It is combined with another catalyst such as platinum that can produce hydrogen gas from water, to duplicate photosynthesis.
The conversion of solar energy into hydrogen under ambient conditions is considered to be one of the greatest challenges scientists face in this 21st century.
Scientists believe this process could help create cheap electricity, reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, and thus help mitigate global warming.
The technology used in Nocera's latest artificial leaf is based on work done at the Nocera Group.
New catalysts in the Nocera labs self-assemble from water to form a partial cubane structure. They are self-healing, and they split PH-neutral water into hydrogen and oxygen at atmospheric pressure and room temperature.
Cubane is a synthetic hydrocarbon molecule that consists of eight carbon atoms arranged at the corners of a cube with one hydrogen atom attached to each carbon atom.
The catalyst operates at 100mA per square cm at 76 percent efficiency.
"Look at the numbers," the Yankee Group's Howe said. "At 100 mA per square cm, you get a pretty high density, so they're probably getting some good power from the device."
The efficiency of the artificial leaf is also impressive, Howe suggests.
"Overall, solar panels are typically in the 10 percent efficiency range nowadays, so they're not high-efficiency devices," Howe remarked. "If you have something that's able to absorb sunlight at anything close to 70 percent efficiency, it's practically turning sunlight into gold."
The ability to split PH-neutral water has led to the discovery of an inexpensive hydrogen-producing catalyst that operates at 1,000 mA per square cm at 35 mV overpotential.
What all this means is that it could eventually enable the large-scale deployment of solar energy by providing a mechanism for its storage as fuel, the Nocera Group states.
The development of Nocera's artificial leaf is a step in the right direction, Jim McGregor, chief technology strategist at In-Stat, told TechNewsWorld.
"This may lead us to larger solutions that let us use thermal, solar and hydrogen solutions all at one time, and that will be huge," McGregor stated.
Relying on solar energy alone is not good enough, McGregor said.
"One of the problems with solar rays is that they heat up the equipment you use excessively," McGregor explained. "After a certain period, the equipment gets so hot that efficiency goes down. So you want to try to mimic nature and create an ecosystem where all these technologies -- thermal, solar and hydrogen -- work together," he said.
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Our concern, of course, is that it's very nearly April 1. We're also worried by the fact that Fuhriman has a name that sounds ominously like a social subculture that we've grown strangely attracted to here in the Download Squad bunker.
Finally, just stop and think about it for a second. Because your cloud girlfriend will be entirely virtual, she could be based anywhere. She could be underage -- or overage -- or she might be someone who you know in real life. She could even be a relative of yours, and you'd never know.
Let's not forget this is the Internet we're talking about, folks. Worst case scenario, she could turn out to be a hairy, male truck driver from Texas. Such as... your dad, perhaps?
Tags: cloud, cloud girlfriend, CloudGirlfriend, facebook, girlfriend, maslow, social network, social networking, SocialNetwork, SocialNetworking, twitter, virtual, virtual girlfriend, VirtualGirlfriend
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As you may have guessed from the name, you're a bison (not a burrito, though). In the course of your day-to-day grocery shopping, you're abducted into a bag of gummy bears, and must now fend for yourself.
At the beginning of each round you launch yourself onto the marching gummy (gummi?) bears, while you're being watched by a huge crowd of even more gummy bears. Your goal is to keep bouncing on the bears and earn more and more money while you do it. Every time you hit a gummy bear, you lose some momentum. If you hit the floor, you basically lose all of it.
But don't give up just yet! You have an emergency thrust which you can use to gain some momentum and keep bouncing on those bears. This extra thrust gets refilled as you hit more bears.
There are also special gummy bears that give you extra thrust or extra money. The money comes in handy at the end of each round, when you can shop for cool stuff to make your bison even more effective against those gummy bears.
It's a fun and colorful game that kept my interest for quite some time, and almost sent me running to the closest store to get some gummy bears!
Tags: burrito, burrito bison, flash, fun, game, gummi bears, GummiBears, gummy bear, GummyBear, time waster, time-waster, time-wasters, TimeWaster, web
review
The Nintendo 3DS: Soon To Achieve Greatness �
COOL
Acer releases Iconia Dual-Screen Tablet �
Samsung gets tabby
Galaxy Tab 8.9 And 10.1: Dual Core, Thinner Than iPad 2 �
3D ME
Hands On With The Nintendo 3DS �
2006-2011
Goodnight Zune �
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Balance takes that ingrained bit of knowledge and cancels it out. Suddenly your cursor (a blue dot) is solid ? and if it touches the blue block, it pushes it around.
Your job is to use your cursor to nudge the blue block over to the orange block. You will have to push it, lift it and even flip it on its side, and then balance it. It's a very tricky game ? one I wouldn't recommend tackling with a laptop trackpad.
Still, if you have a mouse and a hankering for a little physics gameplay, this is a cute little game. I like how the blue block never stops smiling, it makes me feel better about the world.
Tags: balance, flash, fun, game, mouse, time waster, time-waster, time-wasters, TimeWaster, web
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Asus' latest swing at the tablet scene is the Eee Pad Transformer, a Honeycomb tablet that can be combined with an optional keyboard docking station that turns it into a notebook computer, more or less. The Transformer's guts seem to be on par with most other Honeycomb tablets in the field, but will its keyboard accessory be enough to make it stand out in an increasingly crowded space?
Asus on Friday announced the first shipments of its Eee Pad Transformer, which are directed to Taiwan.
The Asus Eee Pad Transformer
The Eee Pad Transformer is so named because it uses an optional docking station that provides a full QWERTY keyboard with unique Android function keys.
This tablet runs on an Nvidia (Nasdaq: NVDA) Tegra 2 dual-core processor and uses Google's (Nasdaq: GOOG) Android 3.0 operating system, aka "Honeycomb."
Its frame just over half an inch deep, and it weighs in at about 24 ounces.
It comes preloaded with Polaris Office 3.0, which supports the most frequently used file formats on PCs, such as Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) Office, XLS, XLSX, PowerPoint, Adobe (Nasdaq: ADBE) PDF, and image files such as JPG.
The Transformer has 9.5 hours of battery life on one charge. This goes up to 16 hours when the docking station is used.
"I'd put this in the class of the Motorola (NYSE: MOT) Atrix," Jim McGregor, chief technology strategist at In-Stat, told TechNewsWorld. "It's seeking to bridge the gap between a mobile device and a computing device."
Asus did not respond to requests for comment by press time.
Like many other tablets running Honeycomb, the Transformer has an Nvidia Tegra 2 dual-core processor.
It also has a 5MP rear camera to shoot and record HD video and a 1.2MP front-facing camera for videoconferencing. The device supports both WiFi and 3G.
The Transformer has a mini-HDMI port, a 3.5mm audio jack, two USB ports and a built-in SD card reader. It also has built-in SRS Sound technology.
The tablet comes with a scratch-resistant 10.1-inch in-plane switching (IPS) Gorilla Glass touchscreen with LED backlighting. This can be viewed at angles up to 178 degrees. ASUS claims the screen provides 50 percent more accurate and crisp rendition than its competitors.
Asus has overlaid its Waveshare user interface on top of Honeycomb.
The company provides one year of cloud storage on Asus WebStorage free to purchasers of the Transformer.
Information on price is still sketchy; reports suggest it will range between $500 and $700. If those reports are correct, the Transformer won't beat out the iPad 2 in price.
Apart from the optional docking station, there's little to distinguish the Transformer from other Android tablets, according to In-Stat's McGregor.
"All these tablets have dual core processors, high quality screens, and dual cameras, so you have to provide a significant differentiation if you're going to target the market," he said.
"I played with several tablets running Android 3.0 at CTIA," Carl Howe, director of anywhere consumer research at the Yankee Group, told TechNewsWorld. "They start to feel very much the same."
That uniformity has led Android tablet manufacturers to seek their own differentiators.
"These guys are all looking for a magic bullet," McGregor stated.
"Do you have a slide-out keyboard, do you have a docking station? I don't think anybody has found the secret sauce," he opined.
Even with the docking station, Acer's Transformer doesn't quite stand out of the crowd, McGregor thinks.
"The docking station is cool, but does it buy me that differentiation? I don't think so," he said.
Whether Asus can match the iPad 2 with its Transformer is open to question.
"Apple blends three ingredients: A sexy device, seamless connectivity and compelling cloud content to create its connected experience," Howe pointed out. "At present, most Honeycomb tablets I've seen are delivering only two out of those three ingredients because they lack the cloud-based apps."
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BlackBerry OS 6.1 is now expected sometime this spring, and Engadget reports that the .1 appears to be a bit misleading. RIM is approaching the update as an overhaul, not merely a minor tweaking. You can probably expect to see BlackBerry OS 6.1 in action this May at BlackBerry World 2011. We'll keep you posted when a beta or final release hits.
[header image via Crackberry]
Tags: blackberry, blackberry os 6.1, blackberry world, BlackberryOs6.1, BlackberryWorld, mobile, osupdates, rim
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One of the major problems of communicating such differences and limitations is that there's no industry-standard definition on what 4G is (or isn't).� Service providers are allowed to use the "4G" designation provided that the next-generation service offers "substantial level of improvement in performance and capabilities" over 3G. This definition helps shield cellular service providers from attack by allowing them to demonstrate that their "4G" networks were faster than their 3G counterparts even if AT&T's 4G is comparatively faster than, say, Verizon's 4G.
AT&T's first response to consumer complaints was to declare that the Atrix and Inspire didn't support the HSUPA (High Speed Uplink Packet Access) protocol. When irate owners took their complaints to the Better Business Bureau, AT&T changed its tune, writing:
(user) complains that the recently released Motorola Atrix does not offer speeds anywhere near what advertised speeds claim. He is requesting activation of 4G services and removal of the cap on the Motorola Atrix services. Account research regarding this complaint shows that AT&T is focused on delivering a wide choice of solutions and the best possible Smartphone experience to our customers. Be assured that AT&T has not "capped" the upload speeds on the ATRIX. The ATRIX is a HSUPA-capable device, and we currently are performing the testing and preparations necessary to ensure that, when we turn this feature on, you will continue to have a world class experience.