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Sprint Voice Outage in New York

By Dan A.
Sprint Voice Outage in New YorkSprint Voice Outage in New York

Sprint Voice Outage in New York

Just when Sprint was getting its mojo back, it is experiencing a bump today as its voice network is down citywide in New York, according to recent reports. The bit of good news is that the data (3G and 4G) part of the network still works normally. Sprint says that it is experiencing some issues with “equipment that has failed” and that a previous repair made things actually worse.

I’m not questioning the robustness of Sprint’s network at this point, but this is definitely not something that will inspire confidence to potential customers who are currently complaining about AT&T’s network. Hopefully Sprint will fix this soon. In you wonder, today’s outage doesn’t seem related to the successful launch of the HTC EVO 4G, Sprint’s new hot phone. Don’t miss our HTC EVO Review by the way.

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XCM Cyberbot Transparent PS3 Slim Case

By Dan A.
XCM Cyberbot Transparent PS3 Slim CaseXCM Cyberbot Transparent PS3 Slim Case

XCM Cyberbot Transparent PS3 Slim Case

Clear casings, regardless of whether they’re for your desktop computer, game boy or any device, are generally cool. Now XCM’s Cyberbot case allows you to apply the same magic to your beloved PS3 Slim. Sure, it doesn’t offer any additional abilities to your PS3, but it does add some serious mojo, and the fact that you can see your Blu-ray disc spinning is a big plus point. Check out a video of it in action after the jump.

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Nokia and Yahoo announce ‘worldwide strategic alliance’ on email, IM, maps, and more

By Dan A.

Carol Bartz and Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, CEOs of Yahoo! and Nokia, respectively, are on stage right now announcing a “strategic relationship” between the two companies on some of their core services. Nokia will be using Yahoo to power its Ovi email and IM services, while Yahoo will be using Nokia / NAVTEQ’s competencies for its mapping and navigation services. Both companies see it as a way to grow their respective userbases, with Yahoo hoping to grab onto the 9 million Ovi users out there, while Nokia hopes that Yahoo could provide it a bit of a USA mojo. Interestingly, Olli-Pekka confronted the US problem head on: “We are an unusual global company in the sense that we are clearly a global leader in our industry, and yet we do not lead in the US.” Carol was similarly forthcoming, saying that Yahoo had “lost its focus on maps a couple years ago,” then correcting herself, saying that they “chose to focus on other areas.” The first merged services should launch in the second half of this year.

During Q&A the big answer to everything seemed to be “scale,” but we also heard Carol toss in “downstream” at an opportune moment. When asked how this relates to Android, iPhone and so forth, Carol clarified that this doesn’t change anything they’re doing on those fronts. “It’s not exclusive from that point.” Each service will be branded as “powered by Yahoo” or “powered by Ovi.” Yahoo will be announcing some “social-like” services for its mail and IM soon, but it’s unclear if that’s specifically related to this announcement. Neither company is talking financial specifics, but Olli-Pekka did make it very clear that a Yahoo-branded device wasn’t forthcoming.

Nokia and Yahoo announce ‘worldwide strategic alliance’ on email, IM, maps, and more originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 24 May 2010 10:05:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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AMD promises better battery life and thermals with new Neo CPUs, more power with Phenom II platform

By Dan A.

Could 2010 be the year AMD poses a real threat to Intel on the laptop front? Well, you know that rumor that it’s gonna be powering 109 new laptops? Not only is that true, but it’s also going to be in 26 more thin and light systems. Frankly, we’re not all that surprised, particularly since it’s been no huge secret that AMD’s had a bunch of new processors floating about — some of which have been finding homes in new HP, Lenovo, Acer, and Dell laptops. Thankfully, the silicon heavyweight is finally revealing the source of all this mojo by sharing details about these mighty, yet energy efficient slabs of silicon. Up first is the Ultrathin platform (codenamed “Nile”), which now includes the new 23w Turion II Neo dual-core, Athlon II Neo dual-core, and Athlon II Neo processors — there’s clock speed and TDP specifics of each in the gallery, if that’s your sort of thing. To be found in 11- to 13- inch laptops like HP’s dm1 and Acer’s Aspire One 721, the CPUs can be coupled with ATI Radeon HD 5400 or Radeon 4200 integrated graphics options, not to mention DDR3 and Direct X 10.1 support. The biggest change? Apparently, the line up has been improved in terms of battery life and thermals, and AMD’s promising over eight hours of usage when fully charged. Given that battery life and heat were our biggest issues with the previous Neo processors, we’re happy to see those problem areas being addressed, but we’ll believe it when we really test some of these bad boys in the near future.

On the mainstream side of things, AMD continues to cram desktop power into its Athlon II dual-core, Athlon Turion II dual-core, Phenom II dual-, triple- and quad-core processors. There’s 12 new chips in all, but the top of the line 2.3GHz quad-core Phenom II Black Edition X920 is definitely the most juicy, and should give some Core i7 rigs a run for their money. Obviously those powerful CPUs can all be paired with ATI’s Radeon HD 4500 or higher discrete graphics (which will support Direct X11) or a lower-end Radeon 4200 integrated graphics option. Because AMD now likes to use simple terms with its Vision branding, it didn’t provide any hard benchmark numbers, but it promises 80 percent smoother gaming performance than comparable competitive mainstream systems, and 30 percent longer battery life than AMD’s previous generation of processors. Hit the break for the full presser, and click on through the gallery for a closer look at the technical details.

Continue reading AMD promises better battery life and thermals with new Neo CPUs, more power with Phenom II platform

AMD promises better battery life and thermals with new Neo CPUs, more power with Phenom II platform originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 12 May 2010 00:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Palm Developer Day reveals interesting bits on the webOS 2010 roadmap

By Dan A.

It’s hard to mention the word “Palm” without also mentioning either “takeover” or “shakeup” in the same sentence these days, but the company was able to change the subject — rather refreshingly, may we add — to the more pleasant topic of new webOS features coming down the pike at its Developer Day conference in Sunnyvale this weekend. It doesn’t look like we’ll see anything Earth-shattering this year, but devs will be getting their grubby paws on some oft-requested features including direct API access to the microphone and camera, new security and cryptography features, some sort of “media indexer” that’ll make life easier on folks trying to make media apps, and support for Bonjour, zero-config networking, and the Bluetooth Serial Port Profile, a rather generic profile that should open up the door to new categories of accessories that we haven’t seen paired to a Pre before.

They’ll also be adding support for asynchronous background services written in JavaScript, which should theoretically allow data-intensive apps to be more responsive while they’re hard at work; a redesigned App Catalog (pictured); and a new set of developer extensions called Mojo Core that promises to let folks with existing web apps convert them into webOS apps way faster. Palm’s being coy about when exactly we’ll see this, but the official word is that everything they’re discussing this weekend should be in users’ hands by Fall. As far as we know, they didn’t append “come hell, high water, or acquisition” to that timeline, but we figure it was implied.

[Thanks, David R.]

Palm Developer Day reveals interesting bits on the webOS 2010 roadmap originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 25 Apr 2010 23:55:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Palm’s SVP of software and services takes off, others given cash, stock to stick around (updated)

By Dan A.

No one really knows exactly what’s going on inside the walls of Palm HQ this week — whether the company will sink or swim is perhaps a bigger question right now than it has been since its rebirth last year, and if it does swim, whether it remains independent is another matter altogether. In an SEC filing today, Palm quietly revealed that its senior VP of software and services — Michael Abbott (pictured above), a man who has been largely responsible for webOS as a platform and the critical Mojo and Ares SDKs — will be gone as of April 23. More interestingly, though, it had to hook up a couple other key players with stock packages and $250,000 in cold, hard cash to get them to agree to stick around for a couple years: Jeff Devine, SVP of global operations, and Doug Jeffries, the CFO. Yes, that’s right — Palm’s chief financial officer may have damn near split in the past few days, which is never a good sign for a company whose financial stability is in question. More on this situation as it develops.

[Thanks, Herman]

Update: Since our original report, a number of SEC Form 4s have crossed the wire, indicating that Palm is handing out various quantities of shares to pretty much everyone on the executive roster. Acquisitions frequently involve retention deals for key company players to make sure that the buyer’s new assets aren’t instantly brain-drained, so it’s entirely possible that this is all a harbinger of an impending deal.

Palm’s SVP of software and services takes off, others given cash, stock to stick around (updated) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 16 Apr 2010 20:53:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Spokeless wheels look mean enough for Ghost Rider

By Dan A.
Spokeless wheels look mean enough for Ghost RiderSpokeless wheels look mean enough for Ghost Rider

Spokeless wheels look mean enough for Ghost Rider

We know that Ghost Rider has a badass bike, which is why we think this spokeless wheels two-wheeler is a suitable candidate for the one who wields the power of the Penance Stare. Amen Design Company, the brains behind this mean pair of wheels aim to introduce a new mojo among motorcyclists, but rest assured that their efforts are expensive to replicate, and will most definitely be considered as expensive even. One thing’s for sure though – money can definitely buy you coolness!

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Razer announces left handed gaming mouse

By Dan A.

Razer has definitely been working the gaming mojo this month, first the Mac driver announcement and now DeathAdder. Long neglected by manufacturers because they are of the devil, left handed gamers have had to use an ambidextrous mouse or suffer from poor ergonomics. Razer has heard their cries of pain, and released (what I consider) the best gaming mouse in a left handed model.

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Palm’s webOS PDK beta adds Pixi native development, PDK’d apps will hit the Catalog mid year

By Dan A.

We just sat down with Palm here at GDC and fished out a few more details on the PDK beta front. Firstly, and most interestingly, Palm has confirmed that the PDK now works on all of its handsets (instead of just the Pre and Pre Plus), which means Pixi buyers can stop hating themselves pretty soon. Apparently the level of performance degradation should be comparable iPhone 3G vs. 3GS, which doesn’t sound too horrible. This is functionality that wasn’t available even to Palm’s early PDK partners like EA and Gameloft, so we should be seeing versions of existing games make the jump to the Pixi when the time for PDK beta-developed apps to hit the Palm App Catalog. When will that time come, you ask? The “middle of the year,” or “a few months,” whichever sounds more promising to you. Palm’s not saying whether this new era for the App Catalog (anyone being able to release PDK apps, and those apps working on the Pre and the Pixi) will accompany a full-on webOS update, but it seems logical to us.

On a more technical front, we’re told the PDK supports the Linux standard SDL (Simple DirectMedia Layer) to ease in porting and development (Unreal for Linux runs using SDL, for instance), and that developers could even build apps like an audio processor that rely on PDK components but don’t show up in the UI at all, or OpenGL-empowered things that aren’t necessarily games or in 3D. Also, existing developers have only been able to do “full screen” games that rely on PDK components alone, but the PDK beta lets you mix and match webOS UI with PDK elements. Currently there aren’t many PDK games that use the extra Palm hardware like the QWERTY keyboard and the gesture area, but we’re told that’s all exposed to the developer, along with any other element of webOS that Mojo SDK users have access to. One notable plugin hangup is the fact that Flash only works in the browser, and can’t be embedded into a regular webOS app, PDK or no — though we have to assume this is something that’s in the works.

Palm’s webOS PDK beta adds Pixi native development, PDK’d apps will hit the Catalog mid year originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 09 Mar 2010 19:12:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A lava lamp and a Nexus One tested under 3 Gs of force (video)

By Dan A.

Neil Fraser, a true pioneer of science, wasn’t satisfied with just wondering whether a lava lamp will work on Jupiter. He opted instead to build a freaking centrifuge in the middle of his living room, strap an innocent lava lamp and a Nexus One to one end with counterbalancing weights on the other, and spin that monster up to find out for himself. His instrument was able to generate 3 Gs of lateral force (despite the Nexus One’s G-Force reporting 2.0 Gs due to a bug, now reported to Google), which is comfortably above the 2.5 G gravitational pull that one might experience on the solar system’s biggest planet. So, did the goo keep its mojo under pressure? Did the Nexus One survive the ordeal intact? Click past the break to find out.

Continue reading A lava lamp and a Nexus One tested under 3 Gs of force (video)

A lava lamp and a Nexus One tested under 3 Gs of force (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 08 Mar 2010 09:44:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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HTC Desire: your Nexus One with Sense and Flash has arrived (video)

By Dan A.

digg_url = ‘http://digg.com/tech_news/Google_Nexus_One_Sense_Flash_The_HTC_Desire’; The one thing you’ll never see on a stock Nexus One is a skinned interface like Sense or TouchWiz — they’re just not Google enough for a phone commissioned and sold directly by Mountain View. Thing is, Sense on Android has plenty of fans, and the mere thought of running it on something with as much oomph as a 1GHz Snapdragon brings tears to our eyes. The solution? The Desire, of course, featuring virtually all of the original Nexus One’s mojo with a little less direct Google support, a little more Sense, and a trackpad in place of the old trackball. The 3.7-inch AMOLED display carries over, but things get interesting on the software side: not only do you get HTC’s freshly-updated Sense with Friend Stream, you also get Flash 10.1 compatibility, which means you need every clock cycle of that 1GHz more than you ever thought you would. Unfortunately, North Americans, you’re getting screwed on this one for the time being — HTC is only announcing that it’ll be “broadly available” throughout Europe and Asia in the early part of the second quarter, while it’ll come to Australia via Telstra. Supersonic, care to save us?

Update: Promo video is now after the break (thanks, O’Neill!), and our hands-on with the device at MWC can be found here.

Gallery: HTC Desire

Continue reading HTC Desire: your Nexus One with Sense and Flash has arrived (video)

HTC Desire: your Nexus One with Sense and Flash has arrived (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 16 Feb 2010 05:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Palm throws the doors open: review-free app distribution over the web, open source developers can hop in for free

By Dan A.

Well, things just got interesting. The very evening of the App Catalog’s launch of paid apps, Palm has made a very different kind of announcement: it’s going to let developers skip out on the App Catalog if they so choose. Devs will be able to submit an app to Palm, who will turn around and give them a URL for open distribution of the app over the web — without a review process getting in the way! The App Catalog will still exist for those who want to use it of course, with a $50 entrance fee to get an app inside — and we’re guessing it’ll remain the only way to distribute paid apps — but the new URL distribution should decentralize things just a little bit. In other good news, Palm will be dropping the $99 annual developer fee for folks building open source apps, and hopefully that free ride applies to App Catalog entry as well, though now there’s web distribution to make it less of a sticking point. Palm’s also going to open up its analytic data to developers, and even is giving away Pres and Touchstones to the audience members of the little shindig privy to this announcement — clearly the company is making a strong play for developers, and who doesn’t like to be loved?

[Thanks, Lawrence]

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Palm throws the doors open: review-free app distribution over the web, open source developers can hop in for free originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 05 Oct 2009 23:47:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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