Developages - Development and Technology Blog

Filed under: Ask Engadget, Digital Cameras, Displays, Misc. Gadgets

Frightening though it may be, the fall semester is just around the corner. You know what that means? You’ll actually have to get up at — wait for it — an appointed time. Carissa, being the proactive student she is, posed this question:

“Going to school in the fall, I’m looking for the ideal alarm clock to beat the late nights and what not and noticed a few digital photo frames / alarm clocks. I want a decent alarm clock that has battery backup and good resolution on the screen for viewing photos. An auxiliary audio jack would be a major plus. Which one do you guys recommend that falls under the 200 dollar mark? Thanks a million!”

Look at that — you all even received a thank you in advance! For those who’ve mastered the art of waking up on time and pretending to be a real live adult, which alarm clock / digiframe hybrid have you found to be supreme? Oh, and you know that question you’ve been hitting the snooze on? Yeah, send it on over to ask at engadget dawt com.

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Original post by Darren Murph

Eukariote writes “An estimated 18 million laptops with NVidia G84 and G86 graphics chips sold in the past one and a half years are experiencing high failure rates. Various laptop models from multiple manufacturers (Apple, Dell, HP, Lenovo, and others) are affected. NVidia blames it on bad chip packaging causing thermal failure. BIOS updates that turn the laptop fan on more frequently or permanently have been released by Dell and HP. The cynical interpretation is that this is likely to only delay the problem until the warranty has expired.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Original post by timothy

Neale writes in:

Here’s a quick and easy DIY project to make a shelf out of a ski. It’s a decent use for something people might have lying around, or can at least find pretty easily at yard sales (well, easy up here in the north).

More:

Snowboard bench

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Original post by Becky Stern

Filed under: Cellphones

We’re not sure how this one got past Apple’s App Store censors, but the clever kids at Nullriver have released what appears to be the first tethering solution for the iPhone. The $10 NetShare app is just a SOCKS proxy that links an ad-hoc WiFi network to the iPhone’s 3G or EDGE connection — and if we could get it to work, we’d probably think it was a fine, if hacky, solution to a major limitation of Steve’s baby. As it stands, though, the instructions are pretty sparse, and while we can get the app to recognize a connection, we’re not able to actually load anything. We’re not sure how long this one’s going to last — anyone else willing to give it a shot before it gets yanked?

[Thanks, Zoli; Warning, link opens iTunes]

Update: Aaaaand it’s offline. Shocking.

Update 2: We’ve added our own video hands-on after the break.

Continue reading Tether your iPhone, wirelessly. Maybe. (updated with video)

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Original post by Nilay Patel

Filed under: Cellphones

We’re not sure how this one got past Apple’s App Store censors, but the clever kids at Nullriver have released what appears to be the first tethering solution for the iPhone. The $10 NetShare app is just a SOCKS proxy that links an ad-hoc WiFi network to the iPhone’s 3G or EDGE connection — and if we could get it to work, we’d probably think it was a fine, if hacky, solution to a major limitation of Steve’s baby. As it stands, though, the instructions are pretty sparse, and while we can get the app to recognize a connection, we’re not able to actually load anything. We’re not sure how long this one’s going to last — anyone else willing to give it a shot before it gets yanked?

[Thanks, Zoli; Warning, link opens iTunes]

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Original post by Nilay Patel

prostoalex writes “New York Times magazine explores the history and status quo of Internet trolling. They look at the early days of Usenet trolling, current anonymous forums, and social networking pages as the latest venues for trolls: ‘In the late 1980s, Internet users adopted the word troll to denote someone who intentionally disrupts online communities. Early trolling was relatively innocuous, taking place inside of small, single-topic Usenet groups. The trolls employed what the M.I.T. professor Judith Donath calls a pseudo-naïve tactic, asking stupid questions and seeing who would rise to the bait. The game was to find out who would see through this stereotypical newbie behavior, and who would fall for it. As one guide to trolldom puts it, If you don’t fall for the joke, you get to be in on it.’”

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Original post by timothy

Filed under: Gaming, Peripherals

If you didn’t think every single third-party peripheral provider would try to snag a piece of the band game pie, we guess you thought wrong, huh? With outfits like Mad Catz and Ion already jumping in, it was only a matter of time before Logitech threw on its tightest jeans, blacked out its blond hair and threw up some horns. Details are admittedly scarce, but the company has promised to provide “premium instruments” for Guitar Hero: World Tour on PS2, PS3, Xbox 360 and the Wii. Rockers can expect the new gear to start shipping “later this year,” though prices, designs and pretty much anything else of importance remains a mystery.

[Via NintendoWiiFanboy]

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Original post by Darren Murph

NewTeeVee has been bursting with startup news this week, including news from a bunch of new companies that have barely been mentioned elsewhere, if at all.

Here they are:

• Onecast/1cast
• Zadby
• Anvato
• GoAnimate

Anybody care to venture a guess on what any of these companies actually do?

No, well then, check out the nice summaries of each on GigaOM.

Tags: anvato, goanimate, newteevee, Onecast/1cast, zadby. gigaom

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Original post by nafiz

The Miami-based Macintosh clone maker that was sued by Apple Inc. earlier this month has retained a law firm that has beaten Apple in the past, court documents show.

Apple has charged Psystar with multiple counts of violating copyright, trademark, breach-of-contract and unfair-competition laws by installing Mac OS X 10.5 on Intel-based computers that it has sold since April.

According to the lawsuit, Psystar violated the Mac OS X end-user licensing agreement (EULA) when it installed Leopard on its OpenComputer desktops and OpenServ servers, both which can be ordered from the company with Apple’s operating system onboard.

Now I want to know who bought this clones from Psystar in the first place?

Read more at Computerworld.

Tags: apple, computerworld, leopard, mac, os x, psystar

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Original post by nafiz

Michelle Shildkret, 360i on behalf of TIME.com writes “JV Games was all set to release ‘Beer Pong’ for the Nintendo Wii when parents and lawmakers got a whiff, forcibly renaming the game to Pong Toss and filling its pixelated cups with water instead. But the game is still rated ‘T’ for teen, and anybody who encounters it will be able to draw clear conclusions as to its intended purpose (drink and get drunk).” Lesson: Don’t play games that simulate drinking before you play games that simulate driving, or larceny.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Original post by timothy

Over on Dinosaurs and Robots, Mister Jalopy has been enthusiastically blogging about nifty small buildings, backyard offices, rural getaways, i.e. “shackitecture.” Definitely worth checking out if Lilliputian dwelling is your idea of fun.

Shackitecture

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Original post by Gareth Branwyn

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Yep, just like we’d heard, the Phoenix lander has identified water in a soil sample it collected in Mars earlier, and NASA’s extended the mission for another 90 days to go look for more. There’s no analysis of the ice yet, but it doesn’t look like there’s any organic materials in the sample, and it’ll take another three to four weeks before there’s any more data to reveal. Hopefully that means we’ll be packing up our silver go-go boots and taking off for our fabulous future lives on Mars in a month, but we’ll see how things go.

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Original post by Nilay Patel

Now it looks like Dish Network will be giving us true 1080p HD!

In its press release, the company says that in addition to a host of 17 new national high-definition channels, it will also offer pay-per-view movies in 1080p. The first, available on Friday, is I Am Legend, the Will Smith sci-fi film.

While the satellite company may be the first to sell 1080p content, they’re not the first to announce it. Those honors go to DirecTV; on Monday the company said it would launch an additional 30 national HD channels by the middle of August, bringing its high definition total up to 130.

Meanwhile, the Dish says it will have 100 HD national channels by Friday, and DirecTV announced it will also offer 1080p pay per view programming later this year.

Both companies imply that their 1080p offerings will look as good as Blu-ray discs. DirecTV says its titles are in “the same format used by Blu-Ray HD DVDs.” Dish is even more direct, (so to speak), calling its offerings “Blu-ray disc quality.”

Read more in the New York Times.

Tags: 1080p, blu-ray, directv, dish network, will smith

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Original post by nafiz

Filed under: Laptops

So now that HP’s joined Dell in releasing information on which laptops have those defective NVIDIA GPUs, we can sort of piece together which chips are faulty — and just as had been rumored, it looks like basically every Geforce 8600M and 8400M chip is affected. That’s not good news for NVIDIA, which has been saying that only “previous-generation” chips were problematic — unless the chipmaker is planning on updating the hugely popular 8×00 series sometime, say, now, that’s not exactly true, now is it? Other affected chips appear to be in the GeForce Go 7000 and 6000 lines, as well as the Quadro NVS 135M and the Quadro FX 360M, but that’s just looking at model numbers, and we can’t be exactly sure. We’d say that if you’ve got a machine with any one of these GPUs, it might be wise to call in and see what your laptop maker is going to do — and it would be smart for NVIDIA to come right out and say exactly how big and how bad this problem really is.

Read - Dell list of machines and patch
Read - HP list of machines, extended warranty info

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Original post by Nilay Patel

phorm writes “Reuters is carrying an article about a recent MIT development which may pave the way for solar-energy to be collected for use in low-input periods. According to Reuters, the discovery of the a new catalyst for separating hydrogen+oxygen from water requires only 10% of the electricity of current methods. This would allow storage-cells to function as a form of battery for other forms of energy-collection, such as solar panels. The new method is also much safer (and likely environmentally friendly) than current methods, which require the use of a dangerously caustic environment, and specialized storage containers.” sanjosanjo points out “coverage of the process at EE Times, which features the MIT group’s press release.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Original post by timothy