So, unlike the FilmOn AIR tuner or the Elgato EyeTV, each of which can tune into free-to-air TV using a tuner physically connected to the device, each Aereo subscriber gets their own tiny antenna in one of the company’s centers. Those antennas can pick up HD-quality transmissions, assuming they’re available, and offer content from over twenty channels including shows from ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox.

Aereo Official Intro:

Your individual tuner streams the channel to an HTML5 app, which can be used in desktop browsers, on phones and tablets, and even on some smart TVs. The company expects its subscribers may still want to sign up to on-demand services like Netflix and Hulu Plus, but even with those fees included it still undercuts traditional cable.

However Aereo may face legal headaches from broadcasters over how, exactly, it’s using TV signals. The company isn’t simply offering a tuner, one lawyer told the LATimes, but is modifying the signal to suit distribution to phones, tablets and computers. That could see it fall foul of copyright laws, though no broadcaster has officially commented as yet.

The city-by-city roll out is a byproduct of the antenna cluster architecture, and Aereo isn’t saying when it might expand outside of NYC.

Hardware

Porsche Design starts as it means to go on, with an oversized box first presenting the P’9981 and its desk-stand in one dense foam layer, before revealing different chargers for near-global use, USB cable and headphones, various documentation and your exclusive technical support card, complete with PIN, to access freephone assistance. It’s not quite Vertu’s Concierge, mind; the team will help you set up your P’9981 and figure out its quirks, but not book you theater tickets.

The smartphone itself is certainly distinctive. RIM basically handed over the key parts of its Bold 9900 flagship, and Porsche Design dressed them up in a Dynasty-era suit, shoulderpads and all. It’s a resolutely aggressive, blunt design, all sharp edges and squared-off corners, with plenty of metal and metal-effect plastic, and it’s heavy too, feeling twice its actual 155g weight in the hand.

Porsche Design itself gets top billing, its name engraved into the brushed stainless-steel bar above the display; RIM’s BlackBerry logo is relegated to just below the earpiece, above the 2.8-inch 640 x 480 touchscreen. The display is bright and crisp, though lacks the color saturation of an AMOLED, while the touch response is good. The metal bar continues around the edge of the P’9981 – though with a polished mirror finish, rather than brushed – though the keyboard itself is plastic.

Porsche Design P’9981 hands-on:

BlackBerry devices are famed for their keyboards, in fact you could construct a reasonable argument that it’s QWERTY text-entry that has kept the company afloat the past few years. Porsche Design does away with the 9900′s ‘board – one, we decided, of the best on the market – and replaces it with a heavily-stylized version with pronounced ridges. It’s not a bad keyboard – the spacing is good, as it spreads across the entire 67mm width of the phone, and the keys are clicky and responsive – but it’s definitely a step back from what the donor BlackBerry offers.

It’s also unevenly illuminated, with the backlighting focused in two patches that leave the center column of letters dimmer than the rest. No great functional issue, and you can still see them in low-light conditions, but it’s a noticeable flaw and one – since the backlighting is often active when the P’9981 is docked in its charger-cradle – you’re presented with all the time.

Sandwiched in-between the keyboard and the touchscreen is the usual row of call, menu and navigation buttons. They’re large and plasticky, and rock somewhat unnervingly under your finger. In their midst is the optical trackpad, which doubles as a select button, and is swiftly responsive. The left edge of the phone offers the 3.5mm headphones socket and a microUSB port, while the right has volume keys flanking a mute button (that doubles as a play/pause button in the media app) and a camera shortcut (that can be reprogrammed). On the top there’s a lock button.

If the front of the P’9981 is Terminator sturdy, the back is oddly unreassuring. An ingot of metal bears the 5-megapixel camera – which supports 720p but uses EDoF fixed-focus rather than auto-focus – and single LED flash, but the rest is a plastic panel that, despite being covered with leather, feels unduly cheap in comparison to the rest of the phone. There’s a little flex around the camera section, and the panel itself doesn’t click reassuringly into place as we might’ve hoped.

Peel it off, and you can see the antenna stuck to the back – connected with two discrete pins just above the Porsche Design branded 1,230 mAh battery – as well as the microSD card slot to augment the 8GB of internal memory. You’ll need to pull out the battery to swap the SIM card. This European unit has dualband 3G/UMTS (for up to 14.4 Mbps downloads and up to 5.76 Mbps uploads, network depending), quadband GSM/EDGE, WiFI a/b/g/n (with 2.4/5GHz support), Bluetooth and NFC, along with GPS, a digital compass, accelerometer and twin microphones for noise cancellation. Like the Bold 9900, the Porsche Design P’9981 runs BlackBerry 7 on a single-core Qualcomm MSM8655 1.2GHz processor, paired with 768MB of RAM.

Software

RIM has hung its long-term hopes on BlackBerry 10, the QNX-based OS for phones and tablets expected to debut by the end of this year. Unfortunately, that leaves the P’9981 running BlackBerry 7, just as on the Bold 9900, and it’s a platform that’s seriously showing its age compared to iOS and Android.

Porsche Design, as the name might predict, makes no modifications to the software itself beyond an ill-advised icon redesign. The paired down iconography is certainly in keeping with the rest of the P’9981, but it also leaves app menus confusing: you have to make a conscious effort to tell the difference between each icon. It’s something you’ll no doubt get more adroit at handling, the longer you live with the handset, or indeed you can change the skin altogether.

Beyond that, our primary frustration with BlackBerry 7 is its general sense of being a patchwork platform: some aspects feel relatively fresh, but other areas feel like they’ve been dragged over from RIM’s OS several years back. The text-based elements of the UI are generally the swiftest but also the points that feel most dated in comparison to rival software; in contrast, BlackBerry App World is sluggish and the BlackBerry Maps app is a lesson in frustration compared to Google Maps or Nokia Maps.

RIM has worked hard on the internet experience in BlackBerry 7, and it’s certainly improved from earlier iterations. You still get a throwback mouse cursor, though we came to appreciate it more after finding how much finger-navigation obscures the touchscreen. Pinch-zooming in the browser works, but that compact display also makes it feel clumsy.

As always, the email experience is the primary reason for using a BlackBerry, though it’s at its best if you’re an enterprise customer with a BlackBerry Exchange Server. If you’re on the Gmail train then you’ll have to use IMAP – Google discontinued its Gmail for BlackBerry app late last year – though there’s the Enhanced Google Mail Plug-in from RIM itself that adds spam and archive support, integrates Gmail inbox searches with BlackBerry 7′s universal search, and imports your contacts. Still, the best Gmail experience continues to be on Android in our opinion, with iOS following behind that.

We’ve covered BlackBerry 7 more in our Bold 9900 review, but the long and short of it is that the OS feels dated and is well overdue a replacement. BlackBerry 10 can’t come soon enough.

Camera

5-megapixels is midrange but acceptable for a smartphone, particularly one with business aspirations like the P’9981, but the fixed-focus is a disappointment. Not a surprising one – the Bold 9900 used EDoF after all – but still another black mark against the Porsche phone.

It means you’re limited in how close you can get with your macro shots, and in general images lack crispness in comparison to auto-focus cameras. Color balance is solid, and there’s a nice amount of detail in shots from the P’9981, but unlike, say, the iPhone 4S or Galaxy S II, you wouldn’t want to rely on the BlackBerry for all of your photography needs.

As for video, 720p is your high-definition maximum but the ensuing clips are good. Colors are accurate, if a little muted, and the digital image stabilization is neither ineffectual nor over-aggressive and helps smooth out a shaky hand. We found the sheer heft of the P’9981 also helped on that front too. Recorded clips can be sent via Bluetooth or WhatsApp, or uploaded to YouTube, though not emailed directly from the camcorder app.

Porsche Design P’9981 720p HD Video Sample:

Phone and Battery

Just behind email performance in the Big BlackBerry Book of Achievements is traditionally voice call quality and battery life: on this, the P’9981 drops one of the balls. Calling quality is great, with a loud earpiece and speaker for hands-free use, crisp – but not overly-processed – background noise reduction, and tenacious grip on a mobile signal. We also like how both your mobile network and current WiFi SSID are shown in the status bar.

Unfortunately, whereas at one time BlackBerry devices could be expected to run for days, the P’9981 follows in the Bold 9900′s metaphorical footsteps and tarnishes the family tradition. The 1,230 mAh battery may be Porsche Design branded but it’s otherwise exactly the same powerpack as the 9900 uses, and it’s simply not up to the challenge of the 1.2GHz processor.

RIM does its best to hide that fact, underclocking the chip most of the time so that you’re running on a fraction of those cycles, but step beyond simple email and you’ll find calls, web browsing, photography and third-party apps all take their toll. Left to its own devices and the P’9981 will run for a couple of days, even with email updating in the background, but actually use it as you might a rival smartphone and you’ll struggle to finish a day. The desk charger cradle does at least make topping up the juice more straightforward.

Wrap-Up

It’s hard to imagine the Porsche Design P’9981 convincing the everyman: its severe styling is too divisive, BlackBerry 7 OS questionable, and general specifications uncompetitive in places. Then again, the everyman isn’t the limited edition BlackBerry’s target audience. Like Vertu and “luxury” editions of other manufacturers’ phones, the appeal of the P’9981 is more about who hasn’t got it than who wants it.

$2,350 is a ridiculous amount of money for a smartphone. A quarter of that gets you an iPhone 4S or a Galaxy Nexus, either of which outclass the P’9981 on functionality, usability and – many would argue – style. However, just as Porsche Design borrowed the Dynasty shoulderpads, the P’9981 is the cellular equivalent of Alexis Carrington: brash and unforgivingly blunt, an unapologetic backhanded slap to the face of anybody who thinks their mainstream handset makes them special.

The rest of us will continue to buy iPhones, and Android phones, perhaps even some Windows Phones, and wait to see whether RIM can relaunch itself in Q4 with BlackBerry 10. The biggest problem with the P’9981 isn’t its love-it-or-hate-it design, or its mediocre camera, or even its insane price tag: it’s the fact that it highlights just how tired BlackBerry 7 is. In the end, even $2,350-worth of metal and leather and Porsche branding can’t hide that.

Lurking on the counter like an oversized microwave, the INSIGHT100 can identify liquids, powders and gels inside sealed containers such as glass or plastic bottles or tubs, even if those containers are opaque. The system is said to have a false alarm rate of 1.5-percent or less, and each scan takes under five seconds.

The magic is in something called Spatially Offset Raman Spectroscopy (SORS), bouncing certain spectra of light off a substance depending on the molecules that substance is made up of. As each substance scatters light in different ways, the INSIGHT100 can recognize which are safe and which could be potentially dangerous. Cobalt says it can subsequently update the scanner’s database as new molecular “fingerprints” are identified.

Having already been approved by the European Civil Aviation Conference for its abilities to check for liquid explosives, it’s seemingly down to airports to decide whether to include the INSIGHT100 in their scanning arsenal. Of course, loosening the regulations around bottled water might make things easier for travelers, but it would also cut into a useful extra revenue stream for retailers and airlines; whether they’ll be so happy is questionable.

[via Gizmag]

In fact, Remove can be set to automatically delete any problems it identifies, though you can switch over to manual mode if you decide you’d like to keep something in-frame instead. Obviously the problems themselves have to be moving, since Scalado is cutting out transient objects based on a stationary background.

Scalado Remove demo:

Remove uses similar technology to Scalado’s previous photography app, Rewind. That used composite images to piece together the best group portrait shot, with facial recognition used to scroll through the various expressions your subjects have made:

Scalado Rewind demo:

Scalado will be showing off Remove at MWC 2012 later this month, though the company isn’t saying when we might see it show up on devices commercially.

There are still several issues still to be overcome before Android on the N9 is a realistic prospect, however. Currently the battery indicator isn’t working – the N9 says it needs to be plugged in, though it’s clear from the video that that’s already the case – and network connectivity is also non-functional at present.

When we last saw evidence of the hack, OpenGL support was also causing headaches. That’s implicit to the N9′s 2D/3D graphics, and without compatibility in the ICS port using Android on the Nokia smartphone would be less than comfortable.

Still, an early alpha is promised as in the pipeline, and hopefully as more people weigh in on the hack the coveted 3.9-inch MeeGo phone might get a second wind as dual-booting demand flourishes. More on the N9 in its untampered form in our original review.

[Thanks Kevin!]

The video was allegedly shot by some sort of government-employed engineer in the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug region of Siberia. The man who posted the video is Michael Cohen. The video is very brief and very blurry. I say that no further than where the person shooting video is standing from the creature crossing the river, the video shooter would’ve clearly been able to see what sort of an animal it was.

It looks to me like some sort of brown bear trotting across the water with a large fish flopping around, hanging from its mouth. It appears in the video the section that is supposed to be the “trunk” is actually a much lighter color than the rest of the animal. Watch the video for yourself and let us know what you think in the comments.

[via MSNBC]

Rather than the usual knobs and buttons, Tesla offloads all the HVAC controls, entertainment systems, safety and other gadgetry in the Model X into its vast touchscreen. Multiple USB ports will allow for external devices to be hooked up, and there’ll be third-party app support as well as the promise of Tesla’s own periodic updates to keep your all-electric SUV up to date.

Of course, there’s more to like about the Model X, such as the innovative gullwing doors that have multiple joints so as to open up access to the second and third row of seats even if you’re boxed in at the parking lot. There’ll be two power versions, 60 kWh or 80 kWh, as well as a choice of RWD, AWD and “performance” AWD.

The Tesla Model X is up for pre-order now, and is expected to cost around $50,000 with US government subsidies. Deliveries will begin in late 2013 to early 2014.

Tesla Model S 17-inch touchscreen dashboard demo:

This video has a young lady reading a comic book on your V370 for a couple of panels, decidedly shaking her head at the absurdity of the situations she’s taking in. Once she folds the notebook up and walks through her workspace to head home, she runs into a pack of zombies as well as a an evil bossman, all of them comical enough to make any television watcher turn their head and pay attention. Then all madness breaks loose.

How on earth it makes sense to have several mobile games and Bruce Lee defend the future of the Lenovo notebook lineup, we may never know. How we’ll reconcile being able to watch such things from the comfort of our own home in preparation for a laptop – we don’t mind skipping thinking about that one either. Enjoy the craziness that is the promotion of a dying breed here in 2012.

You’ll see quite a rabble of people jumping for joy when Vic Gundotra makes simple note of the Full Screen option this week, with Gerwin Sturm getting credit as an avid coder and contributor to the Google+ project from the odd angles. It’s the community that surrounds a platform that makes it strong, of course, and though Skype does have one massive following and brand recognition to spare, there’s something to be said about Google’s simple integration and quickness with the updates to their systems. If you’re signed up for any one of Google’s different services, it’s just one more click to get into any of the rest of them – and thus the web does close in.

When I’ve got to teach a new employee or a colleague about something that requires me to show them on-screen what I’m doing, I use Google+. When I want to chat face-to-face with my wife across the country or the world, I use Google+. It’s becoming natural to me and the people I associate with very quickly, and with value added options such as the ability to collectively watch a YouTube video from the chat, Hangouts wont be cutting back any time soon.

Then there’s integration with smartphones – already live now. Plug your smartphone in to your HDTV with its HDMI or MHL port and you’ve got a camera and a giant screen to do large-scale video conferencing on the fly. The ability for Google to grow here is immense, and with video quality and the popularity of the program jumping each time someone like Barack Obama jumps on to have a chat, Google is in a great place with Hangouts.

These units are the same except for their ability to hold media – the PenCam HD comes with the ability to hold a microSD card up to 16GB in size while the PenCam 4GB has 4GB of space built-in to the pen. Both pens are able to switch between video and photo at the tap of a button and are able to plug into either Mac or PC for transferring of data to wherever you plan on putting it. Could this be your 007 moment at last?

HD PenCam

This cam will be able to capture video and still images as both pens are, but you’ll be transferring information to your computer with your included card reader of via USB. This PenCam is powered with a fully rechargeable Lithium-Ion battery that’ll last you you up to 45 minutes of uptime after a full charge, and recharges again video the included USB cord. With an additional 16GB microSD card, Swann notes that you’ll be able to capture up to 8 hours of video or 72,000 still images.

PenCam 4G

This version of the PenCam has a simple USB connector coming straight off the lower half of the device, it able to then transfer the information you’ve collected to your computer with great ease. The battery lasts up to 90 minutes of use per charge and will recharge via your computer’s USB port. With the built-in memory of 4GB you’ll be able to capture 18,000 still images or 2 hours of video. This device will cost you $69.99 MSRP while the HD PenCam will cost you $99.99 MSRP and will be available for purchase from many fine retailers soon!

Hardware

For a “budget” minded device, the MOTOLUXE actually has some of the most successful industrial design we’ve seen from Motorola for a while now. There’s none of the clamorous title-chasing of the look-how-thin-I-am DROID RAZR, just a soft-touch monoblock which feels sturdy and creak-free. It’s a nice compromise on scale, too – the 4-inch display makes for a phone good for web-browsing and multimedia playback, but not so large as to monopolize your hand, pocket or purse. It’s important to note that this is a pre-final device – hence the preview, rather than a full review.

Motorola MOTOLUXE hands-on:

Motorola’s budget has some obvious consequences, though; the screen is 854 x 480 resolution, rather than qHD or 720p, and the processor is an 800MHz Qualcomm MSM7227A paired with just 512MB of RAM and 1GB of ROM. Still, you get an 8-megapixel camera with autofocus and an LED flash, though only a VGA resolution front camera, while the HSDPA radio is limited to 7.2Mbps download rates (network depending) rather than faster HSPA+ speeds.

There’s also WiFi b/g/n, FM radio, Bluetooth 3.0 and GPS, though no NFC; a 3.5mm headphone socket and microUSB 2.0 port, through no MHL HDMI output. The most striking element of the 117.7 x 60.5 x 9.85 mm handset is the broad LED indicator strip in the lower left corner of the fascia – with a cutaway strip underneath – that lights up according to charging status, new alerts and when the battery is running low. It looks great, though it can be distracting if you’re the sort of person who charges their phone overnight with it on the nightstand.

Software

Motorola loads the MOTOLUXE with Android 2.3.7 complete with some Moto Switch 2.0 customizations, though since this is a non-final device we won’t be benchmarking it or passing any lasting judgements. We’d obviously prefer to see Ice Cream Sandwich in play, and Motorola’s tweaked iconography is somewhat underwhelming. Perhaps we’re just reluctant to change, but the graphics aren’t as instantly obvious as Android’s native icon set, leading to hunting when you’re chasing down a specific app.

Stand-out elements in Moto Switch 2.0 are the lockscreen shortcuts, which takes a leaf out of HTC Sense’s book and offers quick access to apps from the lockscreen itself. Motorola outplays HTC by offering six shortcuts rather than its rival’s four, though. Meanwhile there are favorite-apps and favorite-contacts cluster widgets on the seven-pane homescreen, which can either display your most  frequently run/contacted software and people automatically, or show those you manually pin to the group. Unfortunately there’s no way to have a halfway house of both, pinning some shortcuts while allowing the others to dynamically change.

Camera

8-megapixels is healthy for a low-cost device, though there’s obviously more to good photography than raw pixel count. The MOTOLUXE does a reasonable job, though it’s very much dependent on getting sufficient natural light. Colors tend to be muted and there’s noticeable noise around indoor shots. Remember, though, that this could change with final software.

Phone and Battery

In-call audio was solid and the MOTOLUXE’s size made it comfortable to hold for extended conversations. Motorola rates the battery life of the smartphone at up to 6.5 hours of 2G talktime (4.5hrs 3G) and 400 hours of 2G standby (450 hours 3G); we found the MOTOLUXE was easily able to last a day of average use.

Wrap-Up

Motorola has a reasonably wide remit for the MOTOLUXE, targeting it at developing markets in addition to low-cost contract and pre-pay customers elsewhere. If you’re buying a phone with an agreement – and thus a subsidy – there’s a solid argument to be made that upfront cost is relatively insignificant: we’d always recommend going for the best device around, even if it’s more expensive, since the difference in what you pay on day one is marginal in the context of the average two-year agreement.

Still, for pre-pay customers or those wanting an affordable SIM-free device, there’s a lot to like about the MOTOLUXE. The screen offers a solid compromise over size and usability, and the build construction – though not a true “rugged” phone – is high enough to make the smartphone feel surprisingly premium. The camera is only passable and Moto Switch 2.0 is underwhelming, but the sticker price reflects that. Compared to other budget options on the market, the MOTOLUXE has plenty in its favor.

Thanks to Clove for the loan of the MOTOLUXE unit. The handset is available to order now, priced at £215 plus tax.

A £5 initial top-up is good for 250MB of data (that expires after 30 days) over Vodafone’s 3G network. Of course, there’s also WiFi if you’d rather not use the 3G. Those who buy the PS Vita 3G elsewhere will be able to get WipEout 2048 themselves by slotting in a Vodafone SIM and topping up £5.

Released in Japan in December 2011, the PS Vita has struggled to gain a grip on sales, with a lackluster line-up of titles blamed for continuing disappointment at the checkout. That will hopefully change by the time the Vita drops in the US and Europe, with the promise of cheaper downloaded games; however, Sony is courting further disappointment with the news that, in the US at least, PSP owners won’t be able to port their UMD games over to their new PS Vita.

The PS Vita has a 5-inch OLED multitouch display, twin analog sticks, Bluetooth, WiFi and a rear-mounted trackpad. Inside there’s a quadcore ARM Cortex-A9 processor, and Sony loads its own NEAR location-based gaming app.

Still unconfirmed is exactly what resolution the big screen runs at, though LG is believed to be offering an 8-megapixel main camera and there’s what looks to be a front-facing camera lens visible in the video teaser. 8GB of ROM space and NFC is also believed to be onboard, the latter unsurprising as LG has already included the short-range wireless in its recent PRADA Phone 3.0.

Beyond that there are only tidbits to be gleaned from the clip, which shows the PRADA-style circular metal buttons for lock/power along with a sliding microUSB cover door. What we’re really interested to see is whether LG has followed Samsung’s similarly sizable Galaxy Note and equipped the Optimus Vu with a stylus.

We’ll find out more over the next few weeks, we’re guessing; if there’s one thing we’ve learned from previous pre-MWC teaser campaigns, it’s that LG can’t help whispering about its new devices in advance. Whether we have the pockets to accommodate the Optimus Vu will have to wait until Barcelona.

[via Android Community]

The flaw was first discovered and reported on in January by a blog called Console Cowboys, which revealed that by simply appending a specific code to a camera’s IP address, the password requirement could be bypassed. The blog posted detailed instructions on how to breach Trendnet cameras, resulting in links being posted to various message boards.

Offices, children’s bedrooms, and even someone’s bathroom were viewable among the list of video feeds exposed. A list of 679 web addresses to exposed video feeds were posted to a message board within two days with more listings revealed that were also associated with Google Maps locations.

Trendnet is scrambling to release firmware updates to fix the problem, but estimates that there are 26 camera models that are affected. To see if your camera model could be a spy cam, check out the full list here. Also, be sure to check Trendnet’s download page for firmware updates.

[via PC Mag]

Nikon has a camera here that’ll be utterly wicked for a general photographer, certainly overkill for your average blogger, and perhaps just the ticket for those of you out there in film school without the budget for a five figure camera. The video you’re about to see is the behind the scenes look at how filmographer Sandro used the D800 before its announcement to create a short film “Joy Ride.” You can see the entire video in our post earlier today, and get a whiff of how simple it is to capture excellence here:

Notice how the man has the camera on a simple setup that’s not all that different from what you likely use now for your in-school setup if you are shooting video, and this fellow’s not doing all that much more than adding a few high-quality lenses to make the magic happen. Having a bit of filmography skill helps as well. Sandro mentions quite a few bits on how nice the camera is for weight (for mounting) and how the HDMI-out helps to take focus shots on the fly. Lights, camera, inexpensive action!

[via Vimeo]

There’s also a behind-the-scenes clip showing how the D800 showcase was put together. It’s an altogether impressive piece of work, with the DSLR showing its strengths not only in capturing smooth high-speed footage but also in low-light situations and under harsh indoor lighting which can often spell death for flesh-tones.

Nikon is positioning the D800/D800E as ideal for portrait and landscape photographers, as well as those who do plenty of studio work, though the camera is slightly lighter (albeit a little bulkier) than the D700 and so might make for a solid mobile setup. You’ll need reasonably deep pockets, though: the D800 will be $3k when it drops late next month, while the D800E – which gains more detail at the increased risk of moire – will be $300 more.

Note: the sample video is somewhat graphic, showing scenes of childbirth (think a little blood rather than anything too gruesome or NSFW).

Like the white Nokia N9 before it, the white version of the Lumia 800 is gloss-finish rather than matte. That makes it a little more slippery to hold, though it’s still compact enough to grip neatly in one hand. Glossy phones are usually fingerprint magnets, but the white Nokia manages to hide them reasonably well.

Otherwise it’s the same Lumia 800 we know from before, so you get a 3.7-inch WVGA ClearBlack display, 8-megapixel Carl Zeiss camera with 720p HD video recording, and a 1.4GHz single-core Qualcomm processor. OS is Windows Phone 7.5 Mango, and Nokia preloads its Nokia Drive app for free turn-by-turn navigation, along with Nokia Music for free streaming music.

Nokia Lumia 800 White hands-on:

We asked Nokia whether the white Lumia 800 – and the which N9 before it – meant the company had a white version of the Lumia 900 in the pipeline, though it wouldn’t comment. Still, with the production process so similar for the slightly larger, LTE-equipped device, we really wouldn’t be surprised to see a white Lumia 900 show up later in 2012.

Until then, we’ll have to make do with the white 800, though that’s no great hardship. It’s set to go on sale sometime in February, country and network depending.

Samsung first started its overt anti-Apple strategy with a Galaxy S II advert back in November, portraying iPhone queuers realizing that the new handset they were waiting for had been bested by an Android smartphone already available. The company followed up with a second spot, highlighting the aesthetic similarities between the iPhone 4 and the iPhone 4S.

For its Super Bowl ad, Samsung didn’t depart too much from its existing script. Set to “I Believe in a Thing Called Love” by The Darkness, it features band lead Justin Hawkins in a candy-cane catsuit, Australian supermodel Miranda Kerr, football star Brian Urlacher and pro skateboarder Paul Rodriguez.

What’s perhaps more interesting than the “celebrities” is the fact that Samsung actually used some of the 1080p Full HD video content shot by the Galaxy Note itself in with its pro-filmed footage. The whole thing was directed by Bobby Farrelly, best known for directing There’s Something About Mary, Dumb and Dumber and Kingpin.

So, successful campaign or more of the same? Let us know in the poll below.

Google’s doodle – a three part slideshow of stylized drawings – begins with a sketch reminiscent of the final frames of The 400 Blows, where central character Antoine Doinel stares out at the sea:

Truffaut would have been 80 today, and in his 52 years directed over 25 features and shorts. He also produced screenplays for a number of titles, and was an actor in Steven Spielberg’s famous 1977 film Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

More on Truffaut in his Wikipedia article.

Corning continues by showing off Electrochomic Glass, this being a type that in the future will be used for windows to insulate houses, shade or become transparent on command, and is of course, durable. Along these same lines is Architectural Display Glass which allows you to move through your hallways with touch-sensitive boxes galore. Automotive Design Glass will be photosensitive like the Elecrochromic Glass, lightweight, and touch sensitive if need be. Wall-Format Display Glass has the gigantic wall ready to move with a professor, touch-sensitive of course, and Specialty Tablet Glass has your future hand-held book-sized displays ready to roll with anti-microbial, scratch, and chemical resistant formulas to bring you the best overall experience.

The video above is just the short format presentation. Corning has also provided a long-format vision for the future in an explanatory segment that’s twice the length. Enjoy with us the vision Corning has for the glass-filled world of tomorrow in A Day Made of Glass 2: Same Day. Expanded Corning Vision. Head to our timeline below as well to check out extended coverage once again with Gorilla Glass and beyond!

What these HHI researchers are doing is working with DASH, or Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP. This standard works with the LTE standard as it’s quickly replacing UMTS for mobile use around the Earth and will have videos and images made available in various qualities at the same time. Different file sizes will then be available depending on how far away from a strong signal the user is, transmitting stations and the mobile device automatically checking for reception and volume of traffic on the network to choose the best version of the media in question.

Poor reception or a massively overloaded network will result in a diminished quality image or video but judders will be taken out entirely. As connection quality improves, so too does the quality of the media in real-time. Thomas Wirth, Group Manager at HHI noted the following:

“With our mechanism, resources can be optimally distributed, and hence saved. The saved resources can then be allocated to others. This means we can increase the number of users that can be serviced.” – Wirth

In other words, this is great for everybody, including the carriers that distribute the data in the first place. These HHI researchers have already completed a prototype of the brand new Radio Resource Manager and will hopefully be delivering to groups worldwide soon. How would you like a perfect stream of your cat doing a dance in a video you’d usually not be able to view in the Grand Canyon? This is a reality soon!

[via Frauenhoffer]

That concent ranges from full-length movies to music concerts, short films, and TV show episodes. It has all the major licenses including Disney, Sony, Warner Bros, NBC Universal, etc, etc, etc. Unlike Netflix or Hulu, CinemaNow charges users per movie or TV show, and with most titles users have lifetime access to their content on any device that has CinemaNow support. The service is available on computers as well as Internet-connected TVs, Blu-ray players, and set-top boxes. Everything is stored in the cloud so buying a TV episode on the Xbox 360 means you can watch it on your PC later.

This of course is just the latest addition in the growing library of video streaming apps on the Xbox 360. There’s nearly too many to count at this point. Another recently announced addition is Crackle, a Sony Pictures-centric free streaming service that offers Kinect-powered voice control through the app. As always, Xbox Live Gold is required.

[via Multiplayer Blog]

When you do download this update to your Dropbox software for desktop machines, you should know that there are different versions for different Linux builds, but one version per system for Mac OS X and Windows. Dropbox also warns users that they should make backup sets of files while using this update specifically as this testing sequence is in place to test out stability primarily. Those of you updating in the future when the beta is over should have nothing to worry about.

This update will bring you 500MB of free space when you hit the automatic upload option, then 500MB more each time you hit the limit up to 4.5GB more total. This version fixes an infinite restart of Dropbox when the database is corrupted, an import error for iPhone, handles your quota issues on first import more effectively, and has a lovely set of smaller bug fixes. The 1.3 import’s biggest changes are the allowance of batch uploads and downloads of files and the importing of files from cameras, phones, and SD cards in a much more effective manner.

You can download your version of the software courtesy of David E from Dropbox in their community forums and don’t forget to heed the warnings! Nothing is truly free, do your duty!

Microsoft’s video – which was seen last year, though not hosted on the company’s own YouTube account - suggests Google is in effect reading your email and using that information for promotions. On the contrary, “no one reads your email but you” Google insists.”Like most major email providers,” the company says “our computers scan messages to get rid of spam and malware, as well as show ads that are relevant to you.”

As for suggestions Google’s changes are impacting their government users, the company says that’s also false. “Our new Privacy Policy does not change our contractual agreements,” it explains, “which have always superseded Google’s Privacy Policy for enterprise customers.”

“We don’t make judgments about other people’s policies or controls. But our industry-leading Privacy Dashboard, Ads Preferences Manager and data liberation efforts enable you to understand and control the information we collect and how we use it—and we’ve simplified our privacy policy to make it easier to understand. Microsoft has no data liberation effort or Dashboard-like hub for users. Their privacy policy states that “information collected through one Microsoft service may be combined with information obtained through other Microsoft services” Betsy Masiello, Policy Manager, Google

Google deputy general counsel Mike Yang and public policy director Pablo Chavez will appear in a private meeting with the House Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade this week, USA Today reports. The pair will be expected to comment on one of the key concerns the Subcommittee has, that “Google will not permit users to opt out of this information collection and sharing across platforms and devices.”

Further down, the clip approaches the lunar south pole, with the 93 mile wide Drygalski crater visible to the left, and identified by its star-shaped formation in the middle. According to NASA “the formation is a central peak, created many billions of years ago by a comet or asteroid impact.”

Each of the GRAIL craft – named Ebb and Flow – is roughly the size of a washing machine, and entered into lunar orbit around the end of 2011. Unlike most NASA missions, GRAIL is being run for the large part by middle-school students; they’ll pick points on the surface of the moon that they want to see close up, and the satellites will beam back photos for use in schoolroom science classes.

However, there’s other information to be learned too, and scientists plan to use the data to explore how rocky planets including Earth originally formed. NASA promises more footage will be forthcoming soon.

There’s also 6fps burst still capture, and an ISO range of 100 to 25,600. The manual focus mode features a peaking system for swifter and more accurate adjustments, and there’s an easily twiddled mode dial and chunky controls. A pop-up glash and powered hotshoe are on the top, while ports include USB 2.0, AV out, HDMI and 3.5mm audio in.

Although the K-01 will work with all of Pentax’s K-mount lenses, the company has also prepared a special super-slim option, the smc PENTAX-DA 40mm F2.8 XS, for those who want to keep the bulk down. It’s the world’s thinnest interchangeable lens, Pentax claims.

Pentax K-01 and Marc Newson:

The Pentax K-01 will go on sale in March 2012, priced at $749.95 for the body alone, or $899.95 for the body and the 40mm lens. The lens itself will be sold separately at $249.95.

That means you can throw a Quadrotor into the air and have it automatically re-orient itself and hover, useful for deployment in less than stable conditions. However, the real magic – or horror, depending on your willingness to subjugate yourself to our airborne masters – comes when several of the ‘bots work together.

The so-called swarms can fly in formation, maintaining perfect distance from each other, but they can also hold transition between orientations in 3D, as well as shift their positions so as to navigate around obsticles. The figure-of-eight pattern in the video below is particularly mesmerizing.

The brains behind the technology looks to be a blend of several projects going on at the GRASP lab, including the Micro Autonomous System Technologies research – which looks at complex, intelligent robot collectives that would be too difficult to teleoperate – and the SWARMS research “Scalable sWarms of Autonomous Robots and Mobile Sensors.” The latter attempts to replicate biological swarming habits in ‘bots, using robot intelligence to carry out high-level commands from human operators.

[via Google+]

Nokia Belle has already been seen on the market in the shape of the Nokia 700 – our review of which is here - but the upgrade for earlier handsets was a little longer in coming. The company had originally expected to release Belle in Q4 2011, bringing Anna-based phones up to speed, but that was subsequently delayed.

Nokia 700 hands-on:

Belle brings with it an arguably more Android-style interface, with greater flexibility over widgets and iconography on the homescreen, a pull-down notifications bar with settings shortcuts, and a generally more polished user experience. Nokia’s decision to yank the launch page could be a change in strategy, a sign of a premature reveal, or just housekeeping: after all, as you can see in the screenshot above, the E7 is mentioned twice.

[via My Nokia Blog]

Tufeld voiced the B9 Robot, but the character’s movements were played by Bob May, who died in 2009. The voice actor is also known for work in various films and TV shows from the 70s and 80s, including Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and The Time Tunnel, and was brought back for the awful 1998 Lost in Space remake starring Matt LeBlanc.

As for the B9 Robot itself, designed by Robert Kinoshita – who also created Robby the Robot for the Forbidden Planet film – it was more accurately named the “Class M-3 General Utility Non-Theorizing Environmental Control Robot.” Licensed replicas are available, priced at a hefty $24,500, though there are numerous unofficial fan-builds.

However, ThinFilm has apparently been in talks with automotive suppliers about alternative uses of the technology, including tracking the wear on brakes and sending out warnings as to when they need to be replaced. Entertainment is also a possibility, with interactive toys using the inexpensive labels already in the pipeline.

The functionality will be much improved when wireless mesh networking is added, something ThinFilm expects to happen in 2013 or 2014. That would allow NFC communication between the tags and smartphones, for instance, or the central processor in a car.

Roughly 3 x 1.5 inches in size and consisting of five layers sandwiched in a roll-to-roll production process, the ThinFilm labels use the company’s own ferroelectric polymer technology for storing information. Chains of non-toxic polymers can be flipped between two orientations – representing binary “0″ and “1″ – to store non-volatile data; by adding in PARC printed transistors, meanwhile, the tags can collect information themselves and process it.

Cost per tag is around 30 cents, according to the company, which argues that’s cheaper – along with being more accurate – than using alarms in shipping containers for more generic monitoring of perishable goods. They’ll first be deployed in South Africa, but could soon be linking more devices up with the internet of things.

[via CNET]

Google says it will use the harmonized data to improve its services. Spelling corrections will get better, auto-suggestions will become more accurate – and potentially confused topics, like Jaguar cars or jaguar cats, will be less likely to frustrate – and altogether more intelligent mash-ups of data will be enabled, such as using your location, calendar and traffic data to warn you if you’re likely to be late to an appointment.

However, privacy advocates have long been complaining about the extent of the data Google currently holds on each of its users, and this shift to collate that information has done nothing to assuage their concerns.

“Regulators globally have been calling for shorter, simpler privacy policies” Google points out, “and having one policy covering many different products is now fairly standard across the web.” The search company has also streamlined its language, in the hope that anyone who actually does read the new document – condensed down from around sixty policies to one – will stand a better chance of actually understanding it.

The only drawback here in this whole process you’re about to understand implicitly is the fact that you will not be able to download these cloud-based movies for offline viewing. When your movie is in Paramount’s cloud, you can stream it over the internet on your iOS device or through your mobile hotspot, wi-fi, or the equivalent, but no offline viewing in any way at all will be up for grabs. Android, BlackBerry, and Windows Phone are currently not connected to this service and set-top TV boxes and systems like the Xbox, Wii, and more are not able to work with this service at the moment either.

Right now you’re going to be paying $12.99 for the “SD” quality on one of these digital format films and $19.99 for HD. That’s more than you’d pay for a DVD for certain, and right around the same price as a Blu-ray disk right off the shelf. While this idea seems like a great one in some places, especially for people who have iPhones and also a bit of money burning a hole in their pocket, but there doesn’t seem to be room for growth if no inclusion of the rest of the devices listed above come in quick. A person like myself will be willing to connect a computer to my HDTV, but the general public might not.

[via Paramount]

This ad spot and the rest from Samsung in the past few weeks have all been leading up to the big one set to roll out during the Superbowl. While they never technically say the word Apple or iPhone, it’s quite clear what’s going on here. Apple fans wait in line in the cold midwestern weather to get a chance to purchase the next generation iDevice while Samsung customers prod them with sticks. And when I say prod them with sticks, I mean show off their Galaxy S II smartphones.

You can take a look at our history with the Samsung Galaxy S II, you’ll find that there are many more models than just one, and they’re available on many different networks as well. Now that the first line of Galaxy S II devices are out, we expect there to be some alternate names tossed around with the same Samsung power under the hood, as was the plan with the original Galaxy S throughout 2009 and 2010. What will you choose?

The Trafalgar Sun is 30,000 times bigger than a soccer ball and has a surface area of 200 meters-square. Consisting of orange material surrounding a multi-lamp array, it produces the equivalent of 60,000 regular lightbulbs and sucks up 210,000W in the process.

In this second video, exactly how the Trafalgar Sun was made is shown. If you’re looking for a more affordable way to battle SAD, check out the Philips goLITE BLUE which we reviewed last month; a whole lot smaller and dimmer, but a fair bit cheaper too.

This crowd-sourced bit of genius is available to watch both on Vimeo and on YouTube, both versions being dropped into this post here for your enjoyment and just incase one or the other is knocked out by the authorities that be. That said, it does appear that they’ve run into little to no trouble in creating and publishing this fan film, more than likely because there’s so much love in every bit of the process that no Empire could possibly resist. See if you can count how many times Legos are used in place of actors and droids:

This project, again, started in 2009 and was initiated to work with just the first Star Wars film: A New Hope. Contributors were asked to bring forth a 15 second clip assigned to them by the loosely tied leadership for the project, using whatever means necessary to bring the clip to life in a creative way. In 2010 this project won a Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Creative Achievement In Interactive Media, and it’s well deserved! The version you’re watching now has been put together by Aaron Valdez and Bryan Pugh, they doing video editing and sound editing to make this product one that’s not only watchable, but entirely enjoyable to behold!

Now it’s time to start in on The Empire Strikes Back! Hooray!

[via StarWarsUncut]

The core board has two USB Host ports and a USB device port, two CV inputs (or any analog input), two CV outputs (or any analog output), MIDI in, MIDI out and various program selection switches, all on a 92 x 92 mm square. Then there are three Oplab sensors, the TS-2 Tap with a percussion/motion-sensitive microphone, the TS-3 Flip with an accelerometer, and the TS-4 Poke, with a pressure sensor.

There’s also the TS-1 Team Sneaker, an actual shoe with a side-pocket for a sensor, so that you can create music while dancing around like a loon. Each sensor has a 3.5mm input, but you can also hook up your iPad (using MIDI over USB to control the Oplab), your traditional synth, your OP-1 (with the promise of new functionality to be unlocked in future OS updates) or any electrical junk lying around, as in the video below.

Teenage Engineering is asking €279 ($362) for the Oplab core board, with the various accessory boards sold separately at €49 each ($64); the TS-1 sneakers are €125 ($162). A kit, with the Oplab, three sensors and the “lab tray” shown at the top is €400 ($520).In the pipeline is a DIY synth development kit, allowing you to use the Oplab as the core of a retro-style modular analog synth.

[via GearDiary; video via DontEatWhatTheyFeed]

The new figures suggest the video sharing site has seen dramatic growth over the past year. Back in May 2011, Google announced that YouTube was handling around 48 hours of new video uploaded per minute.

However, the site is also looking at other, more professional sources of video to bolster its viewership. In November 2011, Google announced a deal with Disney and Pixar to offer pay-per-view streaming of titles.

Meanwhile, there are various tweaks and improvements being added to the site, including competitive YouTube Slam head-to-head footage with a leaderboard for the most popular clips. Perhaps more useful is the new social integration and channels, which attempt to make actually finding a video from the rapidly-growing selection more straightforward.

That means if you are out hunting zombies and leave your slingshot cocked for a long time it will lose power. That could mean the difference in a dead zombie or one with a headache that is really mad at you. Sprave has fixed this power loss issue with a new enclosed slingshot that looks pretty cool/

The slingshot has a heating element inside an enclosed wooden box mounted on the slingshot. The heating element is powered by a rechargeable battery and when kicked on it heats that rubber band up until it gets all its force back. The red switch on the slingshot turns the heating element on and off. Check out the video to see the slingshot in action.

In the advertisement you’re about to witness, some hipsters awaiting the loving embrace of the next Apple product are greeted by a Samsung hipster with a charger for them. But not before they check out the “first unboxing video” of whatever they’re about to buy, it appearing to them to look “like last year’s phone.” Of course the references are obvious and the point is made.

What do you think of these ads? Are they appealing to you, the Apple customer, or are they insulting to your senses? How about you Samsung customers – do they make you feel superior? And those of you who own an LG device, for example, what do you think of all this hubub? Let us know!

Plug the Raspberry Pi into the TV, using the standard HDMI output, run the AirPlay app, and the iPad can select the cheap computer as a playback option for video. If you’re wondering, the creepy cows are from the infamous cyriak.

Although billed as a low-cost way for students to get to grips with programming and open-source hardware/software, Raspberry Pi is looking more and more interesting to everyone else, too. Back in August it was shown running Quake III, and now it looks like it could make for a capable little A/V streaming adapter too.

The first ten units went up for auction at the start of the month and brought the charity a pretty penny; however regular production has since started, with pricing at the far more reasonable $35.

[via Gizmodo]