Author: Serkadis

No matter how fast we learn to type, it’s never going to catch up to how fast we can speak. Luckily for us, technology might mean it doesn’t have to. Voice-to-text technology is entering more and more industries, and has the potential to make recording, dictating and communicating a whole lot faster.

Take ShoutOUT, a new iPhone messaging app released to the App Store last week.  It’s taking advantage of huge improvements in voice to text technologies to make SMS on the iPhone a much easier prospect, especially for those on the go. What ShoutOUT wants to do is take over the SMS capabilities of your iPhone. It allows users to speak a text message, and then ShoutOUT’s computers transcribe the message and send it to whoever you specify.

But what’s potentially interesting about ShoutOUT is the same thing that’s on the minds of companies like Jott, Dial2Do, and even Google –- using your voice to make tasks that require typing, go a whole lot faster. Whether it’s reading news, taking notes, or even sending email, it can all be done faster with your voice. Not to mention all the upsides of an alternative to texting while driving, or even walking—you get run into by a texter on the street, you start to wish for better voice-to-text technology. Text, by virtue of being readable, is also easier to see at a glance, search through, and organize for later reference.

The knock on all these services, from Dragon Dictation to Jott to Google Voice, is that there’s a huge learning curve to get to know the app, train it to your voice, and use it properly– and often the apps just don’t work. Some apps don’t understand punctuation, so you have to say things like “I went to work this morning comma had three meetings comma one of which went for three hours exclamation point”. It’s not exactly a natural way of speaking. But some people swear by them.

There are a lot of apps out there trying to take advantage of your voice and improvements in speech recognition, and the possibilities are undeniably huge. But the question is, do any of the applications actually work?

To find out, I signed up for several of the biggest players in the voice-to-text field, and gave them all a simple test: “Hello everyone, I’m David Pierce. I have three legs, two arms, fifty-one toes, and am more fun than a barrel of monkeys. I love to skydive, run around in circles, and wear my New York Giants shirt.” It’s got proper names, numbers, and some odd words, so it should be a decent comparative measure of how they do. Here’s a look at a few of the results:

Jott

Made by: Nuance Companies

Cost: $3.95/month and up, depending on how you use it

Use it for: Sending reminders to yourself, managing task lists, transcribing voicemail

Message Transcription: “Hello everyone, I’m David Pearce. I have 3 legs, 2 arms, 51 toes and a more fun than a barrel of monkeys. I love to sky dive, run around in circles and wear my near giant shirt.”

Dial2Do:

Made By: Dial2Do

Cost: Limited Free version, $3.99/month for unlimited use

Use it for: Reading news, sending and receiving emails, sending reminders to other apps

Message Transcription: “Hello everyone. I’m David Peirce. I have 3 legs 2 arms. 51 toes and more fun at the (?) of monkeys. I love the sky dust run around the tickles and run my near time shirt.”

Google Voice

Made By: Google

Cost: Free (ad-supported)

Use it for: Transcribing voicemail, managing SMS and voicemail online and by email

Message Transcription: “Hello everyone, I did pierce. I have 3 lakes to Arms 51 toes and in more fun than available. Peace. I love to Scott, I’ve run around in circles and where my New York Giants shirt.”

Dragon Dictation

Made by: Nuance Companies

Cost: Free App Store app, paid versions of Dragon Dictation desktop software.

Use it for: Anything! Copy and paste to most other apps, on iPhone or computer.

Message Transcription: “Hello everyone and it appears I have three legs to arms 51 times and more fun than dial up monkeys I love to skydive run around in circles and where my New York Giants shirt”

ShoutOUT

Made by: Promptu Systems

Cost: $.99 app in App Store, pay-per-message approach for transcribed message

Use it for: Replacing the SMS feature on your iPhone, texting while driving

Message Transcription: “Hello everyone I’m David Pierce I do you like to to arms to see one toes in a more fun the girl monkeys I love to start I run around in circles and where my New York giants right”

As is made all too clear, this technology is far from perfect. People speak too differently, in everything from speed to accent to pronunciation of certain letters, and creating a technology that works for all of them is an incredibly tall order.

But the potential is great—Dial2Do and Jott let you do things like hear news, send tasks to yourself, and even update a blog; ShoutOUT might be able to make texting a little faster, and a whole lot less dangerous. There have been great improvements, but there’s still a long way to go before your voice can really replace your keyboard.

My fingers are sure crossed.

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Here’s the latest action:

Apple’s Jan. 26 announcement? — Chasing the Financial Times, Fox News reports it has confirmed that Apple will announce a new product in San Francisco that day. Is it a tablet or an e-book reader? The tongues are wagging.

Mophie plans credit-card reader for the iPhone — It looks cool, but this Mophie product might fall into the nice but totally unnecessary department. The company normally makes battery packs and cases, but this device gives you an alternative to typing your credit card into various apps by hand. It’s aimed at small business owners.

Evernote hits 2 million users – The life-capture application has hit its second million in less than half the time it took to get its first million. Part of the reason is that it launched a popular app on the iPhone.

CES rumor mill – The biggest U.S. tech trade show isn’t until next week, but the rumors are flooding out. Motorola is reported launching two new phones next week, including an Android-based phone, according to analyst Trip Chowdhry.

The tragedy of One Laptop Per Child — One more design has been shelved, prompting predictions that this effort to educate the world’s poor children through laptops is a failure.

iPhone taking off in China? — The world’s most populous country hasn’t held out the welcome mat for the iPhone. But Apple may be having some success there with sales lately.

User sues RockYou — RockYou acknowledged that it lost as many as 32 million usernames and passwords to a hacker. The first class action suit has been filed. Will there be 32 million more?

New TiVO on the way? — A packaging mishap may be a clue to whether TiVO is preparing to launch a new digital video recorder, sans dial-up modem and including a cable card slot.

Seagate ex-engineer testifies against company — The engineer claims that Seagate had access to trade secrets from Convolve when it designed noise-reduction technology into its hard drives which infringed the latter’s patents.

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The USA Today’s Drive On team took some time out to pick the top 10 most improved models of the decade. To keep things valid the editors kept 2010 vehicles of the list.

“Vehicles had to be currently available for purchase as a new model to be eligible for the list. Here they are, from the most vastly improved to the much better but not quite stupendous.”

We couldn’t help but put together our own list – you can check it out after the jump

1. Chevrolet Malibu
2. Ford Mustang
3. Toyota Prius
4. Hyundai Sonata
5. Nissan Altima
6. Kia Sportage
7. Cadillac CTS
8. Mercedes-Benz C-Class
9. Cadillac Escalade
10. Saturn Vue

Hit the jump to see what our list would be like.

1. Chevrolet Camaro
2. Ford Fusion
3. Cadillac CTS
4. Chevrolet Equinox
5. Ford Mustang
6. Lexus IS
7. BMW 3-Series
8. Mercedes-Benz C-Class
9. Nissan 370Z
10. Volkswagen Jetta

– By: Omar Rana

Source: USA Today

This post is part of the IT Innovation series, sponsored by Sun & Intel. Read more at ITInnovation.com.
Of course, the content of this post consists entirely of the thoughts and opinions of the author.

You don’t often get to see the details of a massive data center. The companies that run them tend to keep things pretty quiet, as they view the datacenter as a competitive advantage. Thus, what happens in Google’s datacenters remains mostly a mystery. And yet, it seems that the folks at Weta Digital, famous for providing the computing horsepower behind major Hollywood blockbusters like Lord of the Rings and now Avatar are apparently willing to open up a bit and provide some details about its setup. What struck me as interesting wasn’t so much the hardware specifics, but how they had to switch from the industry standard cooling system of raised floors and air-cooling, because the machines were too close together to get the necessary bandwidth. So, instead, they went with water-cooled racks. Water-cooled data centers have been increasingly common over the past few years (and were typical with many old mainframes), but they’re still a technology that not all data center operators are comfortable with, and which many still think create more problems than they solve. So it’s always interesting to see another one in action.

At the same time, as neat as it is to read about Weta Digital’s massive computing power (which apparently represents one of the 200 largest “super computers”) in the world, I’m still left wondering if the trend — even for amazing movie effects — isn’t moving away from such massive data centers. We’re seeing more and more what can be done on the cheap. And, no, it doesn’t come close to matching the stunning effects found in the blockbuster movies that Weta works on, but it does have all the symptoms of a classic innovator’s dilemma scenario, where the new stuff isn’t “as good” as the old stuff, but is improving at a faster rate, and quickly reaching a point where it’s “good enough” at significantly lower price points.

Given the regular discussions around here concerning movie budgets, where do people think the technology is headed for movie special effects? Will it always be run in giant datacenters, or is there a place for making high quality (even blockbuster-type) films on cheaper hardware?

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In the heyday of the AT&T monopoly era, the telco’s legendary CEO John deButts had an acronym for the company’s main product. He christened it POTS, aka Plain Old Telephone Service, delivered over Ma Bell’s copper wire public switched telephone network (PSTN). A half-century later, AT&T says it’s time for POTS to die, and it wants the Federal Communications Commission to schedule its funeral.

POTS and PSTN are “relics of a by gone era,” AT&T wrote to the FCC just before the holidays. “Due to technological advances, changes in consumer preference, and market forces, the question is when, not if, POTS service and the PSTN over which it is provided will become obsolete.” The company says it wants the agency to solicit public comments for “a firm deadline for the phaseout” of both, “and it should ask what that deadline should be.”

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Michael Jackson’s groundbreaking music video horror flick has been immortalized among the nation’s treasures in the world’s largest archive of film, TV and sound recordings. Jackson’s 1983 short movie “Thriller,” featuring an unforgettable graveyard dance that helped revolutionize music videos, will live on in the U.S. National Film Registry.

The 14-minute “Thriller” video is among 25 films the Library of Congress added to the registry on Wednesday. It is the first music video included in the 2009 list of cultural treasures that will be preserved for all time.

“Because of the way the recording industry is evolving and changing, we thought it would be good to go back to the developmentof an earlier seismic shift, which was the development of the music video,” says Steve Leggett, coordinator of the National Film Preservation Board.

Joining the King of Pop in the 2009 class are The Muppets, who have earned acclaim for their 1979 film The Muppet Movie — which featured the big screen debut of Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy.

Every week we pose a simple, focused question to the Lifehacker readership about a specific topic: Which is best? From netbooks and malware removal to home servers and wallpaper, here’s a look back at the most popular Hive Five topics of 2009.

The Hive Five asks the question “Which is best?” in a variety of topics covering hardware, software, and sometimes even a combination of the two. Although sometimes it’s easy to predict the winner—Ubuntu has had its share of wins, to be sure—the real value in the Hive Five isn’t actually its ability to elevate a single winner to a pedestal but to highlight all the great options that are out there.

Between the four runners up in each Hive Five and the other options highlighted in the hundreds of comments on both the Hive Five Call for Contenders and the actual Hive Five every week, it’s easy to discover new things. If ever you’re not sold on the winner of any Hive Five always make sure to read over the comments and see if any of them tip you off to a new and awesome product you’d never heard of.

Five Best Netbooks

Some months have elapsed since we asked you which netbook was best, but the newer models of the winner and runners up in that Hive Five are still the forerunners in the netbook market.

Five Best Malware Removal Tools

Nobody likes having their machine laden down with malware. Check out this Hive Five to find great applications for keeping things running smooth and malware free.

Best Home Server Software

Media files, data synchronization, and remote backups, oh my! Home computing has advanced to a point where it’s practical to run your own home server, and we’re running down the five best tools for the job.

Five Best Linux Distributions

There are many, many Linux distributions, and a lot of unique reasons to like them. Read on to see which open-source operating systems inspired our readers to provide our biggest Hive Five response to date.

Five Best Wallpaper Sites

Nobody likes staring at a boring desktop when they fire up their computer every morning. Keep your wallpaper fresh with the five most popular sites Lifehacker readers use to satisfy their wallpaper needs.

Five Best Free Data Recovery Tools

The best way to recover from unexpected data loss is to be properly prepared. With one of the following tools on hand, you’ll always be ready to save your data from the Reaper.

Six Best Video Editing Applications

You want to be the supreme ruler of your own virtual cutting room? Better break out the checkbook-your film-chopping powers aren’t going to come cheaply.

Five Best Web Browsers

It’s probably the most important and debated piece of software on the modern computer. See how your fellow readers get around the net, and vote for your favorite web browser.

Six Best MP3 Tagging Tools

A well tagged MP3 collection makes everything from organization to playback easier. Keep reading for a closer look at your fellow readers’ favorite tools for cleaning up their MP3 tags in this Hive Five.

Five Best Antivirus Applications

Computer viruses are increasingly sophisticated and pervasive. If you can’t afford to run your computer without some sort of antivirus software installed, check out these five popular options to protect your PC.

Five Best Live CDs

Live CDs (and DVDs) are versatile tools, allowing you to boot into an operating system without installing anything to your hard drives. Let’s take a closer look at the five most popular live CDs.

Five Best Disk Defragmenters

Your computer is a busy beaver, rapidly accessing and utilizing files all in the name of bringing you what you want, when you want it. Sometimes it needs a little help tidying up, and that’s where these five disk defragmenters come in.

Five Best Portable Applications

Whether you got a shiny new flash drive over the holidays or your old thumb drive is looking for a new lease on life, pack it full of goodness with these five killer portable applications.

Five Best Instant Messengers

Instant messaging has become so ubiquitous, an entire generation of internet users is probably unaware there was ever life without it. Check out the following five most popular instant messengers to to help you communicate across networks and the world.

Five Best Free System Restore Tools

Backing up data is a great way to minimize losses after a computing catastrophe. But what about restoring your actual system right away? Here are the five most popular reader choices.

Five Best People-Search Engines

Need to do a little online detective work? Track down anyone from long lost schoolmates to the new friend whose number you’ve lost with this assortment of powerful people-search engines.

Five Best System Tray Applications

The Windows system tray can be so much more than a parking lot for programs you don’t want cluttering up your task bar. Read on to see the five most popular tray tools readers can’t live without.

Five Best Online Backup Tools

Local backup is a useful and necessary part of securing your data against catastrophe, but with the advent of broadband and inexpensive online storage, you’ve got little reason to not back up critical files to the cloud as well.

Five Best PDF Readers

Adobe’s free PDF reader has long been a standard for handling its extremely popular document format, but you aren’t limited to using it to view your PDF files. Let’s take a look at five of the most popular PDF readers.

Five Best Video Players

We’ve come a long way since animated GIFs and video-game-style MIDI files were considered cutting edge computer-provided A/V entertainment. Take advantage of today’s high-quality video with one of these five most popular video players.

Hive Five: Five Best Mind Mapping Applications

Mind mapping is a great way to add structure to brainstorming sessions and visualize your ideas. Check out the applications your fellow readers use to do their best brainstorming.

Five Best Windows Task Manager Alternatives

The Windows Task Manager is a functional but basic tool for keeping an eye on what your computer’s up to. If you want to go beyond the built-in tool and for more in depth information and control, check out these five alternatives.

Six Best Portable Operating Systems

Why restrict yourself to merely carrying around your data on a thumb drive? Take your entire operating system on your flash drive with the excellent portable operating systems you’ll find inside this week’s Hive Five.

Five Best Portable Apps Suites

Once upon a time, easy remote computing was a pipe dream, now people routinely carry gigs of data around on flash drives smaller than a modest pack of chewing gum. Manage your apps and data with these portable application suites.

Five Best Virtual-Desktop Managers

Long before multiple monitors were popular (or financially feasible), there were virtual desktops-applications that allow you to swap your entire workspace with another for easy compartmentalization of your work. Here’s a look at five of the most popular virtual-desktop managers.

Five Best Application Docks

Remember the days of digging through folders of shortcuts and menus to launch applications? These days many users prefer customizable, attractive docks for launching and keeping track of their favorite apps. Here’s a look at five of the most popular docks.

Five Best Time-Tracking Applications

Where does the time go? Whether you need to know for billing purposes or just want a better idea of how your work day is split up, you can always answer that question with a good time-tracking application.

Five Best Software Update Tools

Rather than wait around for your software to notify you of updates (let’s face it, a lot of applications never will), these five handy tools keep an eye on your apps, alert you when an update’s available, and streamline the updating process.

Six Best Exercise Planning and Tracking Tools

Technology and exercise make an excellent pair; you can now track, plan, and graph your workouts more easily than ever. We’re here to take a look at six of the most popular tools for the job.

Five Best Alternative File Copiers

If you do any serious file copying on a Windows system, you’ll quickly discover that there are substantial limitations to the default file copier. Ease your file copying frustrations with these five alternative copiers.

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Which is Your Favorite Hive Five Topic from 2009?(polls)

Have a favorite Hive Five topic from 2009 that wasn’t highlighted here? Let’s hear about it in the comments. If you have a topic you’d love us to cover in 2010, make sure to send an email with your suggestion to tips @ lifehacker.com with “Hive Five” in the subject line so we can add it to our list.

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A good idea if you can afford the cartridges: Mark Tasman took a picture of himself every day (or more often) for 10 years, and has put them all in order to create this video. Man, that would be an arduous process. I’d have to hire an underling.

If you need more time-shifted beard action, try our slow-motion bearded high fives.

[via Laughing Squid]

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It’s almost January 1st, 2010 and we’ve been mulling over our favorites of 2009 – and the previous decade. Here we present another installment in our “Of the Decade” lists.

The aughts were a great time for gamers. The decade began auspiciously with the launch of the PlayStation2, and is ending quite nicely with a Nintendo victory that would have been thought impossible a few years ago. More people than ever are gaming, and the business has grown to enormous size. We’ve chosen the following games as the best representatives of this decade of gaming.

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Not much to say here other than there’s a PlayStation emulator for the HD2 and it bloody well works! The original gangster of consoles, already emulated on other WinMo devices such as Toshiba’s TG01, has made its way to HTC’s finest thanks to version 0.10 of the First PlayStation Emulator for Windows CE. You can hit the read link to find out how to get it up and running on your own handset, and then we’ll naturally expect you to come back and tell us how good it felt to play Final Fantasy VII in a whole new way. The more impatient among you will already be watching video of the HD2 running Tekken 3 effortlessly after the break, so go join ‘em already.

Continue reading HTC HD2 plays Tekken 3 using FPSECE emulator

HTC HD2 plays Tekken 3 using FPSECE emulator originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 30 Dec 2009 19:47:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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2010 will be the first year that Apple doesn’t take part in MacWorld, but that doesn’t mean the company doesn’t have big announcements that need to be made. According to both the Financial Times and Fox News, they’ve been told by a “source inside Apple” that the company will be holding a special event on January 26th that will be focused on the mobility space. What does that mean? The iSlate / iGuide / iPad / Apple Tablet should become a reality.

Now, we aren’t ones to spur unnecessary excitement, but lets look at the facts. The last iPod event was on September 9th, so we know that this won’t be focused on the iPod, although we wouldn’t be that surprised to see an iPod touch with a camera appear here. The MacBook Pro should be getting a spec bump based on new Intel architecture, but that wouldn’t be enough in and of itself to warrant a special Apple Event. The rumors and leaks have gone on long enough, and we think that January 26th will mark the day that Apple shows the world how tablet entertainment devices should be done.

What do you think?

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Filed under: Hardware, iPod Family, OS, Apple, MacBook, iPhone

Our friends over at Engadget have selected their top 10 gadgets of the last decade (the naughts, as I like to call them), and Apple has come up big: four out of the ten choices are made by the company from Cupertino. The iPhone is on the list (of course), as is the iPod. The original Titanium PowerBook fills a spot for its “category-shaping design” and its influence on laptops since its release in 2001.

Perhaps most interesting, Mac OS X is on the list right alongside Windows XP as a co-gadget of the decade. Engadget says that both operating systems provided fresh and clean restarts for their respective companies, and that while OS X took a little while to “become a usable daily OS” (ouch), it still helped to “set a new standard for computing.”

Being the Apple weblog that we are, we might argue that Windows XP provided a solid update to Windows 98, while OS X offered up some actual innovation in the operating system market (and Apple still carries the banner on commercial UI innovation today). But we’re nitpicking on that one — 40% of their gadgets that shaped the decade were made by one company, and that’s good enough for us.

TUAWApple nabs four of Engadget’s 10 gadgets of the decade originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 30 Dec 2009 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Mel Gibson’s upcoming film has been met with protests in Mexico over plans to transfer prisoners ahead of shooting.

Gibson will begin filming the action-drama How I Spent My Summer Vacation at the Ignacio Allende prison in the Gulf coast city of Veracruz next month and some inmates will be be relocated to make way for production, the BBC reported this week.

The protesters say it would be more difficult for them to visit loved ones incarcerated in the prison or bring them food if they are transferred out of Veracruz.

One protester held a sign that read, “No transfers to make a movie.”

“We have been here all night, supporting our relatives. While we are here we won’t let anyone take them away,” said another.

Gerardo Duran, the director of the Ignacio Allende prison, says the reports of massive transfers are just hearsay, but he did acknowledge that part of the facility will be cleared to allow the filmmakers to work.

How I Spent My Summer Vacation — written and directed by Gibson — will feature the Braveheart star as a career criminal who learns to survive in a violent Mexican prison with the help of a 9-year-old boy.

The U.S. Department of Energy has finally made good on its threat to take its label off of certain refrigerators made by Korean giant LG Electronics. The move is indicative of the DOE’s new, tougher approach to energy efficiency standards and certification.

In the last few years, the Energy Star name seemed to mean less and less. Apparently after certifying certain products, the department failed to follow up with appliance makers to make sure that models bearing the label actually met efficiency specifications. A lot of unqualified products ended up being shipped with the Energy Star blessing — negating its ability to help consumers make eco-friendly choices.

The program, managed jointly by the DOE and the Environmental Protection Agency, finally audited its activities in October — probably leading to its decision to purge the LG refrigerators. As it turns out, makers of most household appliances, like fridges, washing machines, dishwashers and air conditioners, are able to present their results directly to the DOE to earn Energy Star certification. Whereas makers of eco-friendly windows and light emitting-diode systems have to have their data verified by independent bodies.

At this point, it wouldn’t be surprising if the DOE started giving every application this level of scrutiny.

On closer inspection, LG’s fridges fall short of the money and energy savings that they had promised when they first earned the Energy Star brand, the department says. By no small measure either. Apparently the fridges use about twice the power that the company said.

LG hasn’t exactly accepted fault. Quite the opposite, it has turned around and sued the DOE, claiming that the department switched up the test it uses to qualify appliances for Energy Star. Regardless of the outcome, it’s nice to see the DOE and EPA taking a stand and using the recognizable Energy Star brand to truly reinforce its energy efficiency goals.

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Grey-haired Mac users probably remember Filemaker, an easy-to-use database application for the first Macintosh computer in 1984. Some of them still use it. I know a reporter who maintains a decades-old Filemaker database of people he’s spoken to on the job. The program is inexpensive, not hard to figure out compared to, say, MySQL or Oracle, and it has a reputation for not crashing and destroying months of carefully entered data.

Now, Filemaker the company is trying to capture a new generation of customers by meeting their expectations for low, low prices. Filemaker Pro for Mac or PC costs $300. Filemaker’s Bento, a Filemaker-compatible application aimed at beginners, lists for $49. But earlier this year, Filemaker released Bento for the iPhone in Apple’s app store at the crazy-low price of $4.99.

At five bucks, it’s a lot of app for the money. Bento builds real Filemaker databases on your iPhone that are automatically backed up by iTunes whenever you sync the iPhone with a Mac or PC. It’ll store, according to the documentation,  ”text, numbers, dates, times, durations, pictures, sounds, video clips, pop-up choices, check boxes, prices, rates, addresses, phone numbers, ratings, web sites, e-mail addresses, instant messaging accounts,” and then some.

Five bucks. No hidden extra costs. No need to install the company’s pricier desktop wares. Why so cheap, I asked?

“What we set out to do was introduce an entire new generation to databases,” Ryan Rosenberg, the company’s VP of marketing, told me in a phone interview. The company’s thinking was that a super-low price would open up whole new customer markets. Some would become desktop customers, surely, but mostly the plan was to maximize the app’s reach among people who wouldn’t see a reason to pay serious money for a database program.

Bento on the iPhone comes with 25 templates for databases with household and small-business themes: Vehicle maintenance, travel expenses, club membership lists, and it’ll track your New Years resolutions, too.  The program does lack some of the desktop version’s add-on features, such as the crowdsourced template repository where several hundred customer-built templates are available. But Bento’s iPhone databases will definitely work with Filemaker’s premium desktop applications.

The app has already sold well over 100,000 copies, putting it near the top of Apple’s productivity category. The low price gets people to try it, but Rosenberg says Bento’s real appeal is that unlike Web-based databases such as Quickbase or Zoho Creator, Bento runs right on the iPhone and stores its databases in the phone’s memory. It doesn’t require that AT&T’s network be reachable. “What the iPhone has done is throw the whole idea that everything should be an app on the Web on its head,” he said. “There’s a lot of demand now for stuff that runs right on the phone, because the experience is better.”

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It’s been quite a while since TiVo has given us a new model of DVR, but a shipping error pretty much confirms that the company is set to launch a new device called TiVo Premiere (alongside the TiVo Premiere XL.) Recent TiVo HD purchaser Patrick McCarron had a TiVo Premiere setup guide included in his order, and he decided to throw the whole thing up on Scribed for our perusal. The main details here are the the S-Video port is out, and there is only space for one multistream CableCARD now, as opposed to the two slots found on the TiVo Series3 and TiVo HD.

Not much more is known about the TiVo Premiere at the moment, but we are crossing our fingers for a storage bump and beefier internal components that can power a new TiVo high definition interface. CES is just about a week away—we’ll be sure to stop and chat with the TiVo folks.

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Mariah Carey and Vanessa Hudgens have been tapped to play a crooning mother and daughter duo in a new motion picture comedy about televison talent shows.

“Mariah is eager to capitalize on her acclaimed performance in Precious with another movie,” says a Hollywood producer, who asked to remain anonymous. “There is one project where she would play one half of a mother and daughter singing duo who audition for a TV talent show.”

In January, Mariah will accept the Breakthrough Performance Award at the Palm Springs International Film Festival for her role as a social worker in Precious. The film was recently named the year’s best in a poll by Rolling Stone.

The singer said to be unsure about accepting the role in the American Idol-esque movie, despite her recent success at the box office. The diva recently admitted that she is irritated by the constant criticism of her 2001 box office stinker Glitter. Mariah insists she wants to move on from the musical.

“It just gets annoying when eight years later they’re like, ‘The Glitter star, da-da-da’,” she told Time Out New York. “I’m like, ‘Yeah, you’re current.There have been worse movies. And I’m not sticking up for that movie. ‘Cause it wasn’t my thing. I didn’t create it. But I do think the soundtrack is good.”

At 39, the “Vision of Love” star’s big source of consternation about accepting the role is the possibility of playing a mom to the 20-year-old High School Musical hottie.

“Vanessa Hudgens has already been approached for the daughter role. The only sticking point seems to be whether Mariah feels comfortable playing mom to a teenager. She’s a little sensitive when it comes to her age.”

Filed under: Aftermarket, Coupe, Performance, Porsche

There aren’t too many places you can cruise at over 200 mph in relative safety, but the Papenburg test track is one of them. The high speed oval located in Northern Germany is a pavement playground for supercars in search of straight line speed, and various manufacturers and tuners regularly use the track to see just how fast their projects can go.

Take, for instance, 9ff. The Porsche super-tuner previously used Papenburg to reach v-max in its GT9 supercar, and they recently brought out a modified 911 Turbo dubbed the TR 1000 for a high speed romp. While not quite as fast as the GT9 (409 km/h), the TR 1000 still reached an impressive 391.7 km/h — just over 243 mph. Fortunately the cameras were rolling, giving us an opportunity to see just how quickly a 1000 horsepower Porsche can triple the legal speed limit. You can watch it for yourself after the jump.

[Source: 9ff, YouTube via WorldCarFans]

Continue reading Video: 9ff TR 1000 reaches 391.7 km/h at Papenburg test track

Video: 9ff TR 1000 reaches 391.7 km/h at Papenburg test track originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 30 Dec 2009 19:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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