Video: Android hacked in place of Windows Mobile on a Touch Pro2
While a lot of people are pretty pumped about Windows Phone 7, there’s are some people who definitely are not: everyone stuck on a now antiquated Windows Mobile 6.5 handset. Microsoft has already confirmed that if your phones running 6.5, it’s not going to be running 7 any time soon.
If you can’t join’em, beat’em, right? There’s a new project in the works which aims to breath new life into old Windows Mobile 6.5 phones.. by replacing the whole OS with Android.
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Video: Android hacked in place of Windows Mobile on a Touch Pro2
Tip: Use packing peanuts to hold nails and screws in place
Using a foam packing peanut to hold a nail or screw in place is brilliant. I like to think of myself as a pretty mild-tempered person but any time anybody’s asked my wife about the most angry she’s ever seen me, she always tells the story of when we first moved into our apartment here in Boston and I went around the house hanging our window blinds. Shoulda used peanuts.
The universe was angry that day, my friends. Forces everywhere were conspiring against me. Every single screw that needed to be driven into a window frame wobbled violently and then fell to the ground. Over and over and over again.
I finally succumbed to using a power drill to bore starter holes where each of the screws would eventually go but, of course, I hadn’t properly charged the battery and couldn’t remember where I kept my drill bits. Basically, a project that should have taken an hour ended up consuming me with rage for the better part of what felt like eternity.
Anyhoo, I should have used foam peanuts. That’s the takeaway. Hold the screw in place, get it started far enough into the wall that it’s stable, and tear the foam away. Simple.
10 Uses for Foam Packing Peanuts [This Old House via Lifehacker]
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Tip: Use packing peanuts to hold nails and screws in place
Totally Unreal: Palm and Epic Games bring Unreal Engine 3 to webOS
Only yesterday we were drooling over the idea that Epic Games had managed to port their draw-droppingly beautiful game engine, Unreal Engine 3, to the iPhone. As it turns out, the iPhone isn’t alone – it’s heading to webOS, too!
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Totally Unreal: Palm and Epic Games bring Unreal Engine 3 to webOS
EA drops fat cash on The Old Republic
What’s it going to take to dethrone World of Warcraft? One of two things, I’d say: one, an asteroid smashing directly into the planet, with Blizzard at the exact location of impact, or two, Blizzard releasing World of Warcraft 2. The asteroid is more likely at this point. So you can imagine the time and money EA is putting into The Old Republic, the only MMO with a chance in hell of taking away even a fraction of WoW’s subscribers.
At some fancy financial-type meeting in New York, EA said that BioWare’s The Old Republic is the “largest ever development project, period, in the history of the company.” Considering the amount of money that Ea throws at its games these days, yeah, you can assume the company has high hopes for the game. I do.
The game is currently scheduled for release spring, 2011. I don’t know a damn thing about Star Wars, but I’ll at least give the game a shot. It’s gonna take the jaws of life to pry me away from WoW full-time, though. I wish I could put that in a resumé.
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EA drops fat cash on The Old Republic
Green Day: Rock Band launching June 8
Harmonix has officially announced that Green Day: Rock Band will hit retail on June 8th of this year. Interestingly enough, Green Day frontman Billy Joe Armstrong confirmed that the band was working on the game in a radio interview back on June 8th of last year. Mind? Blown.
The game will be priced at $60 on PS3 and Xbox 360, $50 on Wii, and there will also be a $70 special edition game for PS3/Xbox 360 that “Includes special packaging, export and six Green Day DLC tracks ($22 total value),” according to the press release.
You’ll have 47 tracks to play with, all of which will be exportable to Rock Band, Rock Band 2, and Rock Band 3 when it’s released. The game also features “the three-part vocal harmony technology Harmonix introduced with the award-winning The Beatles: Rock Band.”
Coming Soon: Green Day: Rock Band [RockBand.com]
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Green Day: Rock Band launching June 8
AMD working on actual netbook chipset, not due until next year
AMD is finally looking to get into the netbook game for real. Forget about the thin-and-light NEO chipset that’s been out for a while—we’re talking about an honest, netbook-specific chipset based on the company’s Fusion initiative that’ll blend power-sipping CPUs with ATI graphics. The platform will draw between 10 and 15 watts of power and will be designed for screens 12 inches and smaller.
With all these netbooks coming out now that are powered by Intel Atom CPUs paired with either Broadcom HD graphics accelerators or NVIDIA ION GPUs, it appears that AMD must finally be thinking to itself, “These guys from all these different companies have to pair this CPU with that GPU or add this accelerator because Intel’s GPUs stink. We have our own CPUs and our own powerful ATI GPUs. We could do this much more easily and cheaply.”
AMD’s Nigel Dessau told InternetNews.com the following:
“It will have a good processor integrated with graphics, so you won’t need the Ion graphics to give it half-decent performance… If we’d had a part, we’d have been in this space. We didn’t have a part so we went and worked on a part for the thin and light space. The plan is to come to market next year with a Fusion part that fits it nicely in a netbook type thing.”
With the impending confusion that’ll be caused (or is already being caused) by all the pairings between Intel, NVIDIA, and others, AMD is in a prime position to come in with a few netbook chipsets comprised of its own AMD CPUs and respectable ATI GPUs, price them $50 less than comparable Intel offerings, and watch the sales roll in. Unfortunately by 2011, who knows what state the netbook market will be in? AMD can’t just show up and say, “Look! We have a new platform that’s better than the Intel + ION pairings from last summer!”
The company’s got a big opportunity here. Netbooks aren’t going anywhere anytime soon, but people are expecting to be able to do more and more with them—an area where Intel has purposely under delivered in order to try to convince consumers to purchase more expensive CPUs. As it turns out, most consumers don’t really care how fast the CPU is. They just want to watch HD videos and play games. If anyone can deliver that experience in a single, integrated, inexpensive package, it’s AMD.
[HardwareCentral via Liliputing]
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AMD working on actual netbook chipset, not due until next year
Video Demo: Google Reader Play is clearly meant for a tablet computer
We all know that there will be an onslaught of touchscreen computers this year and next. But the Internet really isn’t touchscreen friendly. It was designed for a mouse, not finger input. Google Reader Play is one of the early examples of a site redesigned for this sort of navigation with a slideshow-type interface and larger buttons.
I loaded up the demo on a Viliv X70 tablet computer and found it works quite well on the 9-inch tablet. The buttons could be a bit larger, but overall it’s one of the most touchscreen-friendly websites I’ve seen. Click through for a quick video demo.
The normal version of Google Reader simply doesn’t work well with touchscreen computers. It’s the buttons, really. They are the key to a good Google Reader experience.
Users need a way to star items, access different lists and navigate around the robust interface. Google Reader Play solves all those issues with a cleaner interface and larger buttons. There are still some things I would change, but Google Reader Play is likely still in beta like most other Google projects so I’m not too concerned.
I also don’t see the need to use Play rather than the standard version on a normal computer. It doesn’t offer anything more than a redesigned interface and you can’t add your own RSS feeds into it just yet. It might draw some new users into the RSS world, but most current Reader users probably won’t make the switch besides to see what all the fuss is about.
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Video Demo: Google Reader Play is clearly meant for a tablet computer
Consumer Reports says Apple has the best tech support, Acer/Gateway/eMachines the worst
Consumer Reports has a new report on which computer company has the best tech support. Apple wins! That’s what happens when the same company controls the hardware as well as the operating system (and several of the most prominent pieces of software). The highest ranking PC manufacturer is Dell for desktops and Lenovo for laptops.
The actual report is behind the Consumer Reports paywall, but Slashgear had the bottle to do the impossible and pay for content. Far braver than any of us here.
But the highlights:
• Apple had the tops marks for both desktop and laptop tech support
• Dell leads the PC desktop side, and Lenovo leads the laptop side
• Acer/Gateway/eMachineshas the worst tech support on both the desktop and laptop side
That’s the gist of it—Apple good, Acer/Gateway/eMachines not so good.
It sorta makes sense, in a very superficial way. When you buy an iMac, not only was the hardware created by Apple, but much of the software was created by Apple, too. When you buy an Acer laptop, how is Microsoft supposed to know what kind of hardware it [Acer] stuck in there? Whereas Apple only as to support a pretty small hardware line, Microsoft has to support all sorts of alien configurations.
That still doesn’t explain the manufacturer’s inability to provide tech support for its own hardware. “Hi Dell. Your laptop won’t turn on, what’s wrong?” Dell should go out of its way to help you out. After all, that’s part of the reason why you buy a Dell (or HP or whatever) PC in the first place, so that you can receive tech support when you need it. Otherwise, just build your own PC, like cool people like me do.
But as the family’s “tech guy,” I cannot stress how incredibly infuriating it is to help family members with their computer woes. “My computer is broken,” they’ll tell me over the phone, “I need you to fix it.” Sure, let me stop what I’m doing to try to figure out what the hell is going wrong with your wretched Windows XP installation…
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Consumer Reports says Apple has the best tech support, Acer/Gateway/eMachines the worst
OpenGL 4.0 arrives, brings more opportunities for general purpose GPU action
What's a Game Developers Conference without some sweet new tools for developers to sink their teeth into? Khronos Group, the association behind OpenGL, has today announced the fourth generation of its cross-platform API spec, which takes up the mantle of offering a viable competitor to Microsoft's DirectX 11. The latest release includes two new shader stages for offloading geometry tessellation from the CPU to the GPU, as well as tighter integration with OpenCL to allow the graphics card to take up yet more duties off the typically overworked processor -- both useful additions in light of NVIDIA's newfound love affair with tessellation and supposed leaning toward general purpose GPU design in the Fermi chips coming this month. Lest you don't care that much about desktop gaming, OpenGL ES (Embedded Systems, a mobile offshoot of OpenGL) is the graphics standard on "virtually every shipping smart phone," meaning that whatever ripples start on the desktop front will be landing as waves on your next superphone. If that holds true, we can look forward to more involvement from our graphics chips beyond their usual 3D duties and into spheres we tend to care about -- such as video acceleration. Now you care, don't ya?
OpenGL 4.0 arrives, brings more opportunities for general purpose GPU action originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 11 Mar 2010 11:06:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Disney turns its Monorail into huge Tron light cycles
Tron Legacy is nerds wet dream come true. The movie will hopefully invoke the same sort of futuristic imagination as the original. You’ve watched the trailer, right? Well, anyway, to gear up for the premiere, Disney has skin a couple of its monorails to look like the light cycles. Kind of meta future meets future moment, eh?
[Disney Parks via Sci Fi Wire]
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Disney turns its Monorail into huge Tron light cycles