Posts Tagged ‘electronics’

Rumors of a return for Daft Punk started forming back in January , and we finally have the first solid information on the French electronic duo’s fourth studio album. It’s called Random Access Memories , which suggests that thematically the 13-track record won’t deviate too strongly from the group’s previous explorations of technology and emotions, and it’ll be out on May 21st through Columbia Records. Continue reading…

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New Daft Punk album ‘Random Access Memories’ out May 21st

Nerval’s Lobster writes “The Green Grid, which helped popularize metrics for minimizing wasted electricity in data centers, has developed a new method for cutting down on wasted electronics as old servers and other equipment reach their inevitable retirement. The Electronics Disposal Efficiency metric is designed to help minimize electronic waste, specifically servers and other enterprise hardware. It will take a cue from other organizations, including the Solving the E-waste Problem (StEP) Initiative. The Green Grid is trying to build on established regulations that govern the disposal of consumer electronics such as televisions, including the rules governing Waste Electronics and Electrical Equipment (WEEE) within the EU. The metric isn’t concerned with whether equipment has been reused or recycled, or where it’s broken down into component parts

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The Green Grid Publishes New Data Center Recycling Metric

Soverain, a serial patent troll that successfully won a $17.9 million case against Anne Summers and Avon using its “shopping cart” patents, has been defeated by online retailer Newegg. After losing a case against Soverain back in 2007, the electronics reseller decided to appeal the ruling, and recently saw the decision overturned. As Ars Technica reports , Soverain is currently suing US giants like Kohl’s, Bloomingdales, Walgreens, and Home Depot; by winning its appeal, Newegg has effectively invalidated the patents for use in any future cases.

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Newegg defeats ‘shopping cart’ patent troll that sued nearly 50 online retailers

Welcome to The Verge: Weekender edition. Each week, we’ll bring you important articles from the previous weeks’ original reports , features and reviews on The Verge . Think of it as a collection of a few of our favorite pieces from the week gone by, which you may have missed, or which you might want to read again. Continue reading…

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The Weekender: Windows 8, Microsoft Surface, and the iPad mini

A team of researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Tufts University has developed a process for building fully-functional circuit boards that dissolve in water, opening the way for new types of medical implants, according to a paper published in Science today . Combining silicon with magnesium to create the conductive circuits, the scientists encase them in a special type of silk which offers a controlled rate of degradation. Depending on how the outer layer is treated, the devices can last anywhere between minutes and a number of years.

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Researchers use silk and magnesium to create biodegradable circuits

Setting up a backup is probably on your to-do list. So why haven’t you done it yet? Maybe it’s because you’ve got a million other things to do, or maybe the technical aspects are a little daunting. A backup may seem like just another mundane task in your long list of to-dos, but a day will inevitably come when your hard drive dies, when your laptop is stolen, or when your accounts get brutally hacked

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How to: easily build a backup system for your Mac or PC

The famous design of the London Underground map was first conceived in the 1930s by engineering draftsman Harry Beck, who based his idea around the clarity and simplicity of electrical schematics — now, Japanese designer Yuri Suzuki has taken the concept full circle , creating a functioning radio using the Tube map as a circuit board. Currently on display at London’s Design Museum, the printed circuit board (PCB) covers the full length and breadth of the city’s present-day transport network, using strategically placed resistors, capacitors and other electrical components to harness the interconnections in the system. “I think the PCB is a remarkable invention,” says Suzuki in an explanatory video . “Due to the process and efficiency of… Continue reading…

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Designer builds functioning radio with London tube map circuit board

We were already pretty sure that Amazon’s September 6th event would bring the unveiling of a new Kindle Fire, and now Amazon has made that even more likely with the announcement that the Kindle Fire is now sold out. This comes after several weeks of diminishing Kindle stock on Amazon’s site, with the Kindle Touch completely unavailable as of a few days ago. Unsurprisingly, Amazon took this moment to tout the Kindle Fire’s success — while the company still hasn’t officially given any sales figures, Amazon claims the Kindle Fire has taken 22 percent of the US tablet market. That’s impressive, but it’s worth nothing that the Fire has basically no global presence.

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Kindle Fire is now sold out, has 22 percent of the US tablet market

Moleskin is continuing its push from analog to digital: after unveiling its Evernote Smart Notebooks earlier this month, the paper notebook company is now partnering with Samsung on its Moleskine app for Android. The app is another sketching, drawing, and note-taking app in an increasingly crowded field, but the partnership with Samsung means that the app is preinstalled on the Galaxy Note II and 10.1, and it is exclusive to Samsung for about six months, a Moleskin representative told us. The app itself is currently in Alpha form, and many of the menus and features are not available. At the app’s core is an iBooks-like bookshelf where all of your journals sit

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Moleskine for Android features ivory-colored pages and style, launching exclusively for Galaxy Note

We know the feeling. Faced with a menacingly blank TextMate window, you’re finding it hard to get over your coder’s block. Crossrider understands too, which is why it’s developed Coding.fm ; it’ll bring the keyboard-clacking sounds of three working environments right to your home office to help you get in the mood. Choose from Monday morning coding, Hackathon coding, and Angry dev coding — whatever makes your fingers move

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Coding.fm brings the keyboard noise so you don’t have to

An unpatched vulnerability in the current version of Java has “gone mainstream,” prompting Mozilla to direct Firefox users to switch the plugin off entirely. The zero-day exploit could currently affect users running Java 1.7 on any Windows browser, and Websense reports that it’s now included in Blackhole, the “most prevalent exploit kit out there.” While Oracle is yet to issue a patch for the exploit, IDG says that it was among several security issues reported to the company back in April that have been left untouched until the planned October Critical Patch Update. Mozilla is preparing its own solution which will disable Java by default, but hasn’t announced how this will be implemented. In the meantime, the company is giving users… Continue reading…

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Mozilla warns Firefox users to disable Java following zero-day exploit

Just as it did with AT&T’s One X , HTC is pushing out an update for the Sprint Evo 4G LTE that updates its custom Sense software to version 4.1. As Android Central reports , the main user-facing feature is a new setting that allows you to disable the “three-dot bar” for menus and instead map the menu button to a long-press of the multitasking button, saving precious screen real estate. Quick settings should also make an appearance in the notification area, along with the usual bugfixes, an update to Google Wallet, and an update to Visual Voicemail. Unfortunately, this isn’t the 4.1 that most people are hoping for right now (that would be Android 4.1, not Sense 4.1), but at least you’ll be able to reclaim some pixels while you wait

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Sprint Evo 4G LTE updated with Sense 4.1, improved menu button

One of the headline features of Android 4.1 Jelly Bean is Google Now, the company’s riff on the automated mobile assistant — and today Google has released an update that adds some new features to the mix. Bundled in a new version of the Google Search app itself, it adds two new pop-up cards to Google Now’s arsenal: movie showtimes and public emergency alerts. Movie showtimes can be scheduled to appear whenever you’re near a movie theatre, or even on the days of the week Google notices you search for movie showtimes most often. The emergency alerts will pop up whenever there’s been a public warning about an earthquake, storm, or similar event. The update also adds suport for Korea, and lets users fine-tune which sports teams Google Now…

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Google Now updated with movie showtime suggestions, emergency alerts, and more

We all know the feeling. You’re sleepless in the sad hours of the night or stumbling around early on a hazy weekend morning in need of something to read, and that pile of unread books just isn’t cutting it. Why not take a break from the fire hose of Twitter and RSS and check out our weekly roundup of essential writing from around the web about technology, culture, media, and the future?

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The best tech writing of the week, August 26

Croakyvoice writes “In what seems to be the in thing at the moment comes another auction to add to last months Zelda Nes auction and that crazy Million Dollar Collection. This time for RPG fans this could be classed as the Holy Grail of Nes games. The game in question is Final Fantasy 2 which was never released outside of Japan but luckily for the person who at this time is selling this on Ebay for 50K, there was one made for the 1991 Winter Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas by SquareSoft, sadly the USA version never had a release because they decided to work on the Super NES instead.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Only English Final Fantasy 2 NES Cartridge On Sale for $50K

As Apple v. Samsung progresses, it’s been known for some time that it didn’t have to come to this: Apple had made overtures in the past toward the electronics giant in the past in an effort to secure a licensing deal that would cover patents it believed were being infringed, noting that Samsung is a “strategic supplier.” In court documents released today, we now learn that Apple had a dollar figure in mind in an October 2010 meeting — it was proposing that Samsung pay a base rate of $30 per touchscreen phone (Android, Windows Phone, Symbian, and Bada alike) and $40 per tablet, decreasing to $30 over the course of two years. “Samsung should respond favorably,” Apple’s slide deck notes.

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Apple asked Samsung to pay as much as $30 per Android phone, $40 per tablet for patent licenses

Korean manufacturer LG Electronics has reported Q2 net profits of 159 billion won ($138 million), up 46 percent from the second quarter of last year. Attributable largely to a program of cost reductions and a shift away from low-margin products such as tablets , the jump comes amid a 10.6 percent decline in overall takings. While LG’s home entertainment, appliance, and air conditioning divisions performed strongly, revenues from the company’s mobile business fell 28.5 percent year-on-year. Continue reading…

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LG Q2 profits climb thanks to cost cutting, but mobile business flounders

The day Google announced the $199 Asus Nexus 7 tablet , it told us the slate would ship in mid-July. Now, a series of retailer leaks suggest that the slate could arrive as early as the end of this week, depending on where you buy. It’s particularly interesting to see how many brick and mortar retailers are interested in stocking the device themselves. While no store has committed to a specific ship date, Staples is teasing customers with an exceptionally vague shipping window right here : Product will ship between July 12th and July 17th. Expected delivery: 1 – 3 business days, arriving no earlier than July 13th 2012.

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Nexus 7: when and where can you get one?

What you’re looking at is the Nissan NV200, the winner of New York City’s competition to find a new taxi cab. The new design will be officially unveiled today before rolling out in October 2013. As you can see, it’s bright yellow, and it’s vile, even by minivan standards, but it does have quite a few redeeming features. Nissan has fitted charging ports in the back to charge your electronics on the move, and the interior fabric is odor-reducing and anti-microbial. City Taxi and Limousine Commissioner David Yassky thinks that the new taxis will be a hit: “New Yorkers are pragmatic but they also appreciate quality

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Meet the new NYC taxi cab

Apple’s newest iPad, (R) and its predecessor, the iPad 2, are pictured with a thermal camera in Berlin March 22, 2012. Consumer Reports effectively launched “heatgate” hysteria this week, when it reported test results showing that the new iPad reached temperatures of 116 degrees Fahrenheit (47 degrees Celsius) after 45 minutes of running an intense

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Heatgate or Hype? Thermal imaging of new iPad vs. iPad 2 (photo)

Fourteen-year-old Luna Ito started making her own clothes and accessories when she was nine, after attending a friend’s birthday party at a sewing studio in LA. “I remember at the beginning, threading was so hard and I could never get it through the needle,” Luna tells me as she sets up her machine on her

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The cool new thing with tweens? Sewing.

While The Pirate Bay ‘s founders lost their appeals against their sentences in Sweden recently, the torrent site claims to have some unique ideas about how to operate going forward. A blog post reveals plans to host some of the site’s machines on drones that will “float some kilometers in the air,” necessitating “a real act of war” for anyone wanting to take them down. Furthermore, The Pirate Bay tells TorrentFreak that it’s planning to fly the first drone in international waters, which would further muddy the waters surrounding which jurisdictions the site can be accused of breaking the law in. Of course, this sounds like a pretty crazy plan on paper, and The Pirate Bay admits it still hasn’t “figured everything out yet.” Still, the idea..

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The Pirate Bay wants to use flying drones to operate over international waters

The BBC’s iPlayer video-on-demand service has gone live for all Xbox 360 users in the UK, years after it came to the PlayStation 3 and Wii. The service’s launch brings a protracted negotiation battle to an end, and it appears Microsoft was on the losing side. The company reportedly wanted to keep its policy of only allowing paying Xbox Live Gold members access to content partners’ programming, which would have gone against the BBC’s public remit — the broadcaster legally can’t put shows behind a paywall for people who have already paid their TV license fee. The iPlayer is free on all other mobile devices and games consoles that it’s offered on. Now that the iPlayer is here, though, it appears that the wait brought its own benefits….

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BBC iPlayer for Xbox 360 finally launches in UK, includes Kinect support

Last week, Sonos announced it was updating its Controller app for Mac and PC , a relief for many fans of the wireless music system. It’s a much-needed update, as playlist management on the old app was clunky at best and it looked like it was designed around 2005. How’s the fully redesigned Controller 3.7 app hold up? Read on! Continue reading…

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Sonos Controller 3.7 for Mac and PC hands-on

Toy construction sets like Legos and Krinkles can provide an incredible creative outlet for individuals of all ages, but with their own connector types and configurations, most of the systems are designed to work best within their own ecosystems. Coming to the rescue is the Free Universal Construction Kit, a set of 80 blocks designed to let 10 different building systems play nice with one another, from Legos to Duplos, to Gears! Gears! Gears! and Krinkles. Even cooler, the kit — put together by F.A.T. Lab and Sy-Lab — isn’t a physical product unto itself; it’s a set of 3D models suitable for use with Makerbot and other 3D printer systems.

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The Free Universal Construction Kit uses 3D printing to break out of Lego’s walled garden