Author: Serkadis

It may be lagging three inches behind Panasonic’s big telleh, but Mitsubishi’s whopping great screen is OLED. Or should that be ZOLED? It was unveiled at ISE 2010, with Number 6 and Boomer dressy-likeys lending a hand.

The screen is actually made up of ten-centimeter-square panels, with a resolution of 1088 x 640p. Light output is 1500cd/m2 – that’s loads brighter than your common-or-garden LCD display, meaning that it will work in brightly-lit areas indoors – CES 2011, I guess that means you. Time someone updated Chandler: “She was cute enough to make a gadget hack kick a hole in an OLED display screen.” [Oled-Display.net]

Character encoding on the web is probably not the most exciting topic out there but, whether you care about it or not, it is making a big difference on the way most people use the web. Historically, web pages have used, and still do, a variety of character encodings. This works well for English and most Latin alphabet languages, but most… (read more)

Great news for KTM X-Bow owners, racing enthusiasts or practically anybody with a competitive spirit and some cash to spend. This year, the Battle racing series will be launched, a one-make series for the KTM X-Bow.

Participants can use any X-Bow models, as the competition is split into three different classes: one for non-modified KTMs, one for cars with tweaked engine ECUs which don’t get over 300 bhp, and one for extensively modified cars, including the GT4-spec versions.

"This was… (read more)

Fernando Alonso doesn’t think too high of the new rules imposed – or likely to be confirmed – by the International Automobile Federation (FIA), such as the much-talked-about refueling ban and new point scoring system.

Answering to the questions from the international media during yesterday’s car launch event at Maranello, the Ferrari driver admitted his disappointment over the potential adoption of the new point-scoring system. His disagreement over the new format is related to his position i… (read more)

By Sarmad Ali, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal

Steve Jobs said Wednesday that while Amazon (AMZN) has gone a great job with the Kindle, Apple (AAPL) plans to “stand on their shoulders” with the iPad’s e-reader functionality.

Bloggers quickly began speculating as to which device is better, with many pro-Kindle reviewers calling the reader less distracting, while the Apple camp cites the iPad’s multi-purpose nature as a selling point.

An iPad “does so much more — games, photos, videos, email,” wrote Fred Vogelstein in Wired. “I might eventually ditch my laptop for it too.”

GigaOm also sees the Kindle as a defunct device. “The Amazon Kindle is dead thanks to the rich media capabilities of the iPad as well as the full software-based keyboard,” Stacey Higginbotham wrote.

But are those bells and whistles distracting to those who just want to curl up with an e-book? Brad Stone wrote on Bits that the Kindle “will continue to be the best device for lovers of long-form reading, period…when you read a book, you just don’t want to have email, Twitter and the ESPN Web site beckoning from the browser.”

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Buy This Item: [Click here to buy this item]

Read Original Article

Senator, I just remembered the President’s a black guy

We sure hear a lot about the daily vibrations of the poll-ratings of the President, and other, particular Democrats — like well-known “badass” Harry Reid, but what of the man Sally Quinn wishes had been President?

Just 40% of Arizonans approve of the job McCain is doing for them in D.C., according to the poll.

Why that’s nearly as unpopular as Joe Lieberman. And this year McCain has an actual primary challenger, notorious crazy person J.D. Hayworth — who has the jowly-visage only a teabagger could love.

If John McCain ends up losing in 2010, there is one mavericky-lining for him. He will finally be available for those Sunday morning chat show appearances he always has to cancel…or maybe he can make viral-videos?

(pic from here)

Former Xbox Live Arcade exclusives like Castle Crashers and Braid have started to migrate over to the PS3, but so far Rez HD has remained entrenched on Microsoft’s console. It may be not be long before that changes though.

Q Entertainment suggested that it might be a possible in a recent tweet (via Kotaku), “What would a game like Rez HD sell for on PSN? $15? This is no indication that it’s happening, but we’re researching if its feasible.”

Speaking with 1UP about the possibility of a port, former editor James Mielke reiterated that it’s “purely hypothetical” at this point.

Buy This Item: [Click here to buy this item]

Read Original Article

“Millions of people now own Kindles,” said Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com yesterday. That surprised analysts, who thought that Amazon would sell 2.5 million or so of the devices by the end of 2010, nearly a year from now.

We’ve checked with our sources, who have been amazingly accurate on the number of Kindle’s sold over the last couple of years. The total number of all types of Kindles out there in users hands hit 3 million sometime in December, says a source close to Amazon. And that was before the new model with worldwide data hit. And before Amazon started offering free Kindles to select long-time customers.

The Kindle now has real competition from the Barnes & Noble Nook and, more so, from the Apple iPad. But so far at least Amazon has had amazing success with their device. Which is even more extraordinary since the only place you can buy the Kindle is Amazon.

Buy This Item: [Click here to buy this item]

Read Original Article

This is a guest post by Daniel Tenner, CTO and co-founder of Woobius, a web-based document sharing tool for architects, engineers and designers. He also blogs at danieltenner.com and tweets at @swombat. This is his take on the iPad.

To much of the geek-sphere, the iPad is somewhat of a disappointment. It’s underwhelming. I think part of the reason for this is, as usual, that the first round of people interpreting the meaning and purpose of the iPad are all geeks – developers, designers, and assorted Macheads who already own one or two macs at least, and an iphone.

But the vast majority of the world is still using Windows PCs. And for them, an iPad may be exactly what they’ve been waiting for. Let me elaborate on this…

Buy This Item: [Click here to buy this item]

Read Original Article

One of the more exciting camera technologies to emerge in the last 18 months is undoubtedly the Olympus and Panasonic Micro Four Thirds format. Amazing little cameras that pack DSLR-quality sensors into relatively compact shooters by ditching the mirror box. So bear with us as we ogle the latest Olympus leak said to be that Micro Four Thirds shooter teased only last week. The image shows a 14-42mm lens with rumors saying it’ll be cheaper (hooray!) than the E-P1 in part due to a plastic body (eww).

Teased Olympus Micro Four Thirds camera leaked? originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 29 Jan 2010 04:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  43rumors  | Email this | Comments

Buy This Item: [Click here to buy this item]

Article

Will this phone ever stop surprising us? Rumblings that all HD2 devices have 576MB of RAM inside them started developing in China a little while before T-Mobile unveiled its upgraded US-bound handset with, funnily enough, the same amount of memory. Now, those trusty souls over at XDA-developers have concocted custom ROMs for everyone else to free up the extra 128MB of operational headroom, and user feedback appears to corroborate the theory. We can hardly begin to fathom the reasons for HTC disabling part of its available hardware, other than to guess that a WinMo 7 upgrade was in the company’s plans for this phone all along and it just wanted to keep its ability to handle the new OS under wraps. Video and pictorial evidence of cracking past the 448MB barrier after the break.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Continue reading HTC’s HD2 carrying a secret stash of hidden RAM

HTC’s HD2 carrying a secret stash of hidden RAM originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 29 Jan 2010 03:56:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink pocketnow  |  XDA-developers  | Email this | Comments

Buy This Item: [Click here to buy this item]

Article

Amazon had a solid fourth quarter, unsurprising for a retailer, even an online one. But its growth was beyond the usual holiday season uplift in sales, revenue was up 42 percent from last year, from $6.70 billion in 2008 to $9.2 billion in 2009. This comes after similar great results in Q3. Income was also on the rise in Q4 and full-year… (read more)

Campos Grand Prix may do just about everything to secure the necessary funds for their maiden Formula One campaign in 2010. Including the signing of a female driver. According to media reports in Italy, the team is willing to sign a female race driver in order to attract the much-needed sponsorship for the season to come.

The same reports indicated Spanish driver Maria de Villota as being the one eyed by Adrian Campos’ team. The 31-year old racer doesn’t come as an unknown figure for the Euro… (read more)

We’ve been hearing more about cars powered by hydrogen fuel cells in the last few weeks, with Toyota expanding its hydrogen vehicle program earlier this month, and new entrant SunHydro unveiling plans to build hydrogen fueling stations along east coast highways. But today we head from the anointed leader in this new racket, Honda, which not only has a car in development (already approved for sale in the U.S.), but just successfully tested its own hydrogen fueling mechanism.

Running on solar energy, the company’s new pump produces about half a kilogram of hydrogen gas a day, enough to power a car through an average day’s commute. Here’s how it works: Rooftop solar panels channel about 6 kilowatts of energy into a tank of water, which is split. The hydrogen gas is then contained until the car needs to fuel up.

This is an interesting strategy for Honda — one that could provide a model for Toyota, Daimler and General Motors, which all have hydrogen fuel cell models in the works. One of the biggest challenges to any of the advanced vehicles poised to hit the road — plug-in models included — is that there isn’t fueling infrastructure to support them. It’s unclear what needs to come first: the cars themselves, or adequate charging and fueling stations. By pursuing both in-house, Honda may have found a promising solution to this conundrum.

Honda seems to be way ahead of the game in other areas too. For one, it’s already putting driver in hydrogen-powered cars, whereas Toyota, a close runner up, is looking ahead to a 2013 public release. It’s leasing fuel-cell sedans from a company called FCX Clarity to consumers for $600 a month in Los Angeles — the only U.S. city equipped with hydrogen fueling stations.

If General Motors and others follow Honda’s lead and develop their own fueling station designs, what will the average highway look like? Will a standard emerge that can service across brands? Will hydrogen trump electric charging and battery switching stations proposed by the likes of Coulomb Technologies and Better Place? There’s a lot of action in this field to come.

Buy This Item: [Click here to buy this item]

Read Original Article

China, now the world’s biggest automotive market, expects its car sales to see a double-digit increase in 2010, as Dow Jones reports via Gasgoo.

The Chinese Government believes the growth is possible, as it will continue to offer subsidies, albeit smaller than 2009’s ones, to boost car sales and allow people to enjoy the benefits of modern motoring.

"I believe double-digit growth shouldn’t be difficult, although growth won’t be as high as last year," Chang Xiaocun, head of the Mi… (read more)

HTC have yet again posted a hotfix for the HD2s SMS function, though this time, it appears to work!

Available only for ROMs 1.66 and below, it’s described in much the same way as the older “fixes”.

This update for HTC HD2 messaging lets you reach out to your friends and family with instant notifications. Keeping in touch has always been very important, and this update delivers just that: fast and reliable SMS messaging.

One tip before you install the hotfix is to clear your outbox, as all the queued messages there will be sent as soon as you send your first text (that actually works).

The hotfix is available here.

The recession did not affect everybody the same, especially in the auto industry. BMW Group said that, despite the financial and economic crisis worldwide, it managed to reach its objectives for 2009.

We are confident that the BMW Group will, as planned, be able to post a profit before tax for 2009. This demonstrates that rigorous cost management and other wide-ranging measures to improve profitability in conjunction with our Strategy Number ONE are taking effect, stated Norbert Reithofer, Ch… (read more)

Social networking website Facebook is getting used by more and more carmakers or automotive-related companies in promoting their campaigns, vehicles and marketing initiatives. Recently, the 30 dealers who comprise the Chicagoland Toyota Dealers announced that a 2010 Toyota Prius will be offered to one lucky winner at the upcoming Chicago Auto Show, through their Facebook page.

Entry information and contest rules for the "The 2010 Chicago Auto Show Prius Giveaway" are already availab… (read more)