Archive for November, 2012

The HTC One VX was slated to arrive on November 16th alongside its bigger brother, the HTC One X+ , but when the time came, only the latter showed up — the mid-range HTC handset just seemed to have mysteriously disappeared. After a couple of weeks, it seems the phone will finally be in store shelves starting December 7th: “Yes, we expect to be fully stocked in all channels by 12/7,” said an AT&T spokesperson to us. So if you want to snag the VX with its 4.5-inch qHD display, 1.2GHz dual-core Snapdragon S4 processor, 5-megapixel camera and 4G LTE speeds for just $50 under contract, feel free to mark the date on your calendar.

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HTC One VX to be available on AT&T by December 7th

Gareth Cook tells the story of Thorkil Sonne, founder of a Danish social enterprise called Specialisterne (“the specialists”), which helps place people with autism in jobs that demand a degree of focus and detail-orientation that’s impossible to find among the neurotypical. Specialisterne began because Sonne’s son, Lars, has autism, and Sonne saw that he was

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Danish entrepreneur helps people with autism get jobs that require focus, attention to detail

To celebrate the release of The Hobbit, Stephen Colbert will have a full week of Hobbit shows on The Colbert Report starting this coming Monday, December 3 on Comedy Central. A die-hard fan of J.R.R. Tolkien, his guest lineup will consist of Sir Ian McKellan, Martin Freeman, Peter Jackson, and Andy Serkis.

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Tolkien superfan Stephen Colbert will do an entire Hobbit-themed week of shows

You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours — all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy. Continue reading The Daily Roundup for 11.30.2012 Comments

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The Daily Roundup for 11.30.2012

Stacey Ransom points us to this delightful collection of terrifically bad taxidermy!

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Bad taxidermy is good

Gilda Radner was in the news this week — because she wasn’t considered “news” enough for some of the affiliates of Gilda’s Club. That story had a less sad ending than originally thought, with only a small number of Clubs dropping Gilda’s name and not the organization as a whole. But in an attempt to

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Bill Murray describes the last time he saw Gilda Radner

In 1996, the legendary Johnny Cash recorded “I’ve Been Everywhere,” putting his signature on an old-time country classic. The song, which rattles off dozens of locations throughout North America, was an appropriate fit a musician that toured rigorously throughout his storied career. Now through the magic of Google Maps, you can listen to the song while each one of those destinations is labeled with a Johnny Cash pin — all in realtime before your own eyes. Developer Iain Mullan whipped the project together for Music Hack Day London 2012 using MusixMatch (for lyrics), Toma HK and his own programming know-how.

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Music Hack Day project maps out lyrics to Johnny Cash’s ‘I’ve Been Everywhere’ in realtime

Bradley Manning (by Clark Stoeckley) Kevin Gosztola is liveblogging the pre-trial hearing of suspected Wikileaks source Bradley Manning at Ft. Meade. Also in the courtoom, the Guardian’s Ed Pilkington, and Arun Rath of Frontline/PRI’s The World, both of whom live-tweeted the proceedings today. Artist Clark Stoeckley (@WikileaksTruck on Twitter) is also present, and is live-sketching.

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Bradley Manning’s pre-trial hearing: live-blogging, live-tweeting, and live-sketching

By any measure, Michael Jackson’s Thriller was an unbelievable success — but at the time of its release, that success was far from assured. Between the death of popular AM radio, the backlash of disco that made DJs avoid playing “black music,” and the birth of the rock-themed MTV, the 1980s brought with it a myriad of challenges that questioned the identity of the music industry as a whole and threatened the viability of Jackon’s sixth studio album. Billboard has taken a look back at the launch of the iconic 30 year-old album, highlighting how the carefully planned release of a Paul McCartney duet single, masterfully choreographed videos, and one of the greatest performers of all time helped Epic/CBS Records push past the barriers that…

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MTV, race, and radio: How Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ prevailed during troubling times

We’re currently putting Apple’s latest “skinny” iMac through its paces here in New York , but an eager Japanese customer has already popped open the 21.5-inch desktop’s case, revealing a serviceable hard drive, removable logic board and even a bit of room to spare in the tapered silver housing. There’s not much in the way of details over at Kodawarisan , a scant Japanese-language site, but there are plenty of interior pics to gawk at, tiding us over until the experts at iFixit manage to dissect an iMac of their own. Head on over to the source link below for a dozen or so undressed snaps of Cupertino’s latest creation. Filed under: Desktops , Apple Comments Via: Gizmodo Source: Kodawarisan

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New 21.5-inch iMac gets an early teardown in Japan

During the 2000 Presidential campaign, the mysterious, satirical website www.gwbush.com appeared on the web. The criticisms of George W. Bush on it gained media attention worldwide, culminating in a mention by the Presidential candidate at a press conference. The Yes Men were born. Since then, Andy Bichlbaum (real name: Jacques Servin ), Mike Bonanno ( Igor Vamos ), and an ever-revolving gang of comrades have created amusing actions like printing a fake edition of The New York Times in hopes of calling out entities ranging from Dow Chemical and ExxonMobil to the WTO and the United States Chamber of Commerce.

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The Yes Men Kickstart a revolt

The Lord of the Rings Project collects and analyzes data on all the characters inhabiting Middle Earth, to produce statistical comparisons of life expectancy, age distribution, population, and more.

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The social science of Middle Earth

The evil bakers at Eat Your Heart Out showcase these custom-made, specially commissioned hyper-realistic chocolate baby heads, suitable for an infanticidal feast. They won’t say who commissioned ‘em, but I’m guessing whomever it is has plans for a hell of an office Christmas party. A private commission (that’s all we can say), they are solid

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Realistic chocolate baby-heads

If this is the new Motorola , then we have to say we’re fast becoming fans. Hot on the heels of the Droid RAZR M’s recent Jelly Bean update , comes word that Android 4.1 will indeed be rolling out to the Droid RAZR HD and RAZR Maxx HD in December. Announced as an update on Verizon’s site, the OTA is said to arrive “in phases starting next week,” bringing with it the eerily prescient Google Now and ISIS compatibility. So, until then, you can hold off from manually (and obsessively) refreshing that system update setting. Filed under: Cellphones , Wireless , Software , Mobile , Google Comments Via: Droid-Life Source: Verizon Wireless

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Android 4.1 Jelly Bean rollout for Droid RAZR HD, RAZR Maxx HD to begin next week

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‘Snow Crash’ is December’s Book Club pick!

It’s hard to look at Pinokio, an animatronic lamp that responds to its surroundings, and not think of Pixar’s logo; sure enough, its creators modeled their work after the Luxo lamp made famous by the animation studio. Hacked together by Shanshan Zhou, Adam Ben-Dror and Joss Doggett, Pinokio incorporates a webcam, mic, mechanical iris, servos, and a halogen globe in its advanced construction. From there, the group relies on Arduino, OpenCV, and plenty of code to give the lamp its impressive head-tracking and motion capabilities. But the lamp can do more than merely follow your movements — a video demonstration reveals that it recognizes sound and even situations where a person intentionally hides from its camera

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Inspired by Pixar, animatronic ‘Pinokio’ desk lamp tracks movements, reacts to environment

The 2012 election has been a treasure trove for data miners, statisticians, and analysts — they collected massive amounts of information and developed novel analyses that will be useful for years to come. One of Obama’s reelection campaign teams dedicated themselves to optimizing donation emails, and found that the messages that drew the most money were also the most casual. Subject lines like “Hey” and “I will be outspent” were the most successful, netting millions of dollars according to Bloomberg Businessweek . For more on the surprising discoveries Obama’s campaign made, read the source link below

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The future of election fundraising emails

The Verge staffers aren’t just people who love technology. They’re people who love stuff. We spend as much time talking and thinking about our favorite books, music, and movies as we do debating the best smartphone to buy or what point-and-shoot has the tightest macro. We thought it would make sense to share our latest obsessions with Verge readers, and we hope you’re encouraged to share your favorites with us. Thus a long, healthy debate will ensue where we all end up with new things to read, listen to, or try on

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Verge Favorites: William Savona

Raspberry Pi ‘s Model B computer will be no stranger to regular readers. We’ve seen it turn up in all sorts of projects, and generally stretched in various directions . If you were holding out for the cheaper, lower specced Model A however, your time is near. A recent post on the official Raspberry Pi site confirms that the first Model A samples are rolling off the production line.

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Raspberry Pi’s $25 Model A enters production, could be in tinkerers’ projects early next year

Back in June, Nokia splashed out on a big chunk of Scalado’s imaging business, and now we’re seeing the first fruits of that costly union. The handset maker has re-launched and re-branded Scalado Photobeamer as, you guessed it — Nokia PhotoBeamer. Aside from the name change, it’s the same QR code-based seamless picture service we’ve seen before , albeit with a Windows Phone 8 twist.

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Nokia outs PhotoBeamer picture-sharing app for new Lumias

Next Issue — the service unofficially billed as the Netflix of digital magazines — has just announced an expansion of its catalog, adding eight additional titles to its tablet-based offering. This recent inclusion of big names brings the company’s impressive library to a total of 80 even, letting iPad users now peruse the likes of New York Magazine , Food & Wine and Men’s Fitness, just to name a few. Pricing for both Unlimited subscription tiers remains unchanged, with $10/mo still netting users access to 73 monthly and bi-weekly titles, while the more premium $15/mo service opens up the entire archive. As of now, these new additions won’t work on Android slates , but the company promises “work is underway” to make them available across the board

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Next Issue grows iPad library with addition of eight new magazine titles

Earlier this week, Christopher Nolan sat down with film critic Scott Foundas and talked Batman. A transcript of the interview has now been published by Foundas at Film Comment and it makes for an illuminating read. Nolan discusses his reasons for shooting the trilogy, his philosophy in approaching the characters, and the importance of theatricality in film. Nolan’s hesitance to rely on CGI in his films is well-documented, but The Dark Knight Rises bucked that trend somewhat, featuring an increased amount of computer-generated effects. The filmmaker notes that TDKR only contains “about a third or a quarter the number of CG shots of any other film on that scale,” and explains how he physically combines the effects with the film to achieve..

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Christopher Nolan discusses the challenge of bringing Batman to life

Reddit has become a social powerhouse thanks to its mix of aggregation and user-submitted content, but the website was born out of a different idea altogether. Founders Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian explain that their initial goal was to develop a simple way to order food from local Sheetz gas stations using cellphones. The idea grabbed the attention of Paul Graham — co-founder of Y-Combinator — after the two college students approached him at a lecture. The plan was ultimately rejected when the duo formally pitched it to the startup investor in 2005, but Graham promised funding if they could devise something new

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Watch this: the origin story of Reddit

Just in case you were wondering whatever happened to that delayed-by-lawsuit 10-disc Marvel Cinematic Universe: Phase One – Avengers Assembled Blu-ray set that captured a full series of the Disney / Marvel movies, Amazon is notifying pre-orderers (previously mollified with free The Avengers discs ) of the new release date: April 2nd. While the original suitcase has been scrapped due to a licensing dispute with its designer, a recent post on Marvel’s blog revealed the set will still come in a not-exactly-S.H.I.E.L.D. briefcase complete with glowing Tesseract inside . The movies, bonus content, art cases and all are still intact, however with the delay have come a few extras.

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Marvel Cinematic Universe: Phase One Blu-ray set is back on, ships April 2nd

A re-construction of Charles Babbage’s difference engine, an early mechanical computer, has been captured in precise detail using gigapixel imagery . Babbage, who essentially invented the mechanical computer in the nineteenth century, was unable to execute on his ideas during his lifetime, but scientists successfully reconstructed his second design for the difference engine in the late eighties. Work began to build Babbage’s magnus opus, the highly-complex analytical engine , last year. Today, two difference engines exist, one in Babbage’s London and the other at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California. It’s difficult to grasp the scale of the giant machine through the images, so we’ve included a video of it in action…

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Charles Babbage’s difference engine captured in gigapixel images