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Q101 (formerly on Chicago radio @ 101.1 FM) The Alternative - Chicago's New Rock Alternative - Everything Alternative - Chicago's Alternative - Gen X - Generation X
Samsung’s newest device, the Galaxy Camera, puts the camera first and the phone second. You won’t be able to make traditional calls or send text messages from it, but since it will ship with Android’s Jelly Bean, anything in Google Play store is up for grabs.
In fact, it has all the makings of a smartphone thanks to the 4.8-inch touchscreen, 1.4Ghz quad-core processor, and options for 3G or 4G connectivity, in addition to WiFi. The camera itself is a is rather unremarkable, a 16-megapixel backside-illuminated sensor, but it should put out some terrific photos, whether the subject is shot in dark or light.
The lens, though, can zoom to 21x optical and at its shortest is a wide-angle 23mm equivalent. That is awe inspiring by itself, but even more amazing since it can instantly post photos to any where your heart desires: Instagram, Facebook, etc.
Its release date has not been announced.
READ MORE
http://www.gadgetreview.com/2012/08/samsung-galaxy-camera.html
Wanna part with some cash for no good reason? This little android could be YOURS to control with your OWN Android Phone!
Have your credit card ready and select your color. See the demo here!
WATCH HERE
http://videos.huffingtonpost.com/tech/control-this-tiny-android-with-your-android-517458213
Many of us will accumulate vast libraries of digital books and music over the course of our lifetimes. But when we die, our collections of words and music may expire with us.
Someone who owned 10,000 hardcover books and the same number of vinyl records could bequeath them to descendants, but legal experts say passing on iTunes and Kindle libraries would be much more complicated.
Why? With digital content, one doesn’t have the same rights as with print books and CDs. Customers own a license to use the digital files—but they don’t actually own them. Apple and Amazon.com grant “nontransferable” rights to use content, so if you buy the complete works of the Beatles on iTunes, you cannot give the White Album to your offspring.
One lawyer’s (David Goldman) idea to do this legally is to help estate planners create a legal trust for their clients’ online accounts that hold music, e-books and movies. Purchase his software, Dap Trust, to store and manage digital accounts and passwords. And, while there are other online safe-deposit boxes like AssetLock and ExecutorSource that already do that, Goldman says his software contains instructions to create a legal trust for accounts. “Having access to digital content and having the legal right to use it are two totally different things,” he says.
Death may seem a long way off to many, but do you want your hard earned purchases to be for naught? The simpler alternative is to just use your loved one’s devices and accounts after they’re gone—as long as you have the right passwords.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/who-inherits-your-itunes-library-2012-08-23
This week, Dunkin’ Donuts released a new app that lets you pay for doughnuts with your iPhone, iPod touch or Android smartphone.
The Dunkin’ app works like the Starbucks mobile payment app. Download it from Google Play or the App Store, then load it up with money. The card supports American Express, Visa, Mastercard, Discover and PayPal.
The next time you need a doughnut fix, you can hand the cashier your mobile device to be scanned rather than using cold hard cash or a credit card.
Other than buying a gift card through this app, can anybody enlighten me as to why this is better than cold hard cash or a credit card?
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/breaking/la-fi-tn–dunkin-donuts-app-20120816,0,3483830.story
Unofficially labeled a “speed management” tool, the Cobra iRadar fits the bill as the “coolest” gadget here. CNet reviewed the product:
The good: The Cobra iRadar works with or without a connected Android or iOS smartphone. Its car charger has a powered USB port for the paired smartphone. A free app helps you fine-tune the iRadar’s sensitivity and discern between actual alerts and false positives, as well as monitor for traffic cameras and speed traps.
The bad: We still ran into a number of false positives during our testing, requiring quite a bit of interaction with the app for the first few days.
The bottom line: The Cobra iRadar justifies its entry-level price as a good radar/laser detector. And when paired with a smartphone running the iRadar app, it becomes a much more flexible and useful speed management tool.
If your driver’s license is already revoked, you may be interested in other toys not related to hurtling down the interstate at breakneck speeds. CNet.com has a variety of new toys to view that are available for you to purchase.
http://reviews.cnet.com/2300-9150_7-10013247-1.html
Thanks to the pace of mobile-network expansion, new audio and video technologies, the expansion of Wi-Fi, and more-capable hardware that runs longer on a single charge, the tablet may begin replacing the smartphone within the next half a dozen years.
Kevin C. Tofel of GigaOm, defends his predictions and gives several reasons why he thinks this will happen.
Our dependence on mobile media consumption is growing. This won’t surprise anyone, but now that traditional video—think movies and TV shows in addition to YouTube (GOOG) content and the Olympic Games—is more readily accessible on mobile devices, screen size and video quality become more important. Why watch the content on a small, low-resolution screen when you can watch it on a high-definition screen that’s still easily portable? There’s just no point in doing so, nor is it likely to be preferred.
Voice on a tablet isn’t as bad as you’d think. He knows this because he’s done it. Kevin took his Galaxy Tab 3G with a data-only SIM card and used it as a primary phone for a few months and later did the same with his Galaxy Nexus phone. To do this, he had to set up Google Voice and Skype forwarding, but in the future it won’t be a difficult prospect. In fact, the original Galaxy Tab actually has cellular voice capabilities, but the U.S. carriers stripped it out.
The user interface is moving beyond pocketable screens. Look at how voice interaction is starting to become part of our digital world. We’re in the early stages—from an end-user consumer view, that is—of speaking to our devices and having them follow our commands or look up information.
Naysayers are still judging based on today’s use cases, not tomorrow’s. So the obvious main retort to Kevin’s thought process is surely going to be, “But you can’t put a tablet in your pocket. Who’s going to carry a tablet everywhere?” And his answers are, “So what?” and “You will, and if you don’t your kids will.” Simply put, we can’t think about today’s constraint of needing to put a mobile device in a pocket. We only put phones in our pockets when we’re not using them. Guess what? We’re using them more and more, which means they’re in our pockets less and less.
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-08-02/heres-why-tablets-will-replace-the-smartphone
Google Fiber will provide internet services 100 times faster than is currently available. It will launch late this year, with high-speed internet and TV connections to consumers in Kansas City. Over time, Google Fiber hopes to spur a new wave of technological innovation, from telemedicine to cloud computing, that can capitalize on its network’s ability to stream high-definition videos and transfer large files. Indeed, some believe Google Fiber is so powerful that it will improve education technology and transform how businesses operate.
“There’s been a lot of excitement” here, says Michael Gelphman, founder of Kansas City IT Professionals, a grassroots networking and peer-advisory group. “Google Fiber has gotten the whole city thinking about technology.”
Google declines to comment on the cost of the Kansas City project, which charges households $70 a month not including TV service, but company executives say it expects to make a profit.
Enabling one-gigabit Internet speeds across the country is still a pipe dream. It would take Google a long time to dig the trenches and string the fiber-optic cable so that it can roll out Fiber elsewhere. According to some analysts’ estimates, the cost would eventually be tens of billions of dollars.
Until then, we must wait and watch as the residents of Kansas City enjoy this dream speed internet.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443545504577563272157846352.html?grcc=422867a418ec56da90aaec61ccfb7ff8Z3ZhpgeZ0Z10Z29Z7Z2&mod=WSJ_hpp_sections_tech&grcc2=e46
Fortunately, Charlie Miller is on the Good Guys side. A skilled hacker, Mr. Miller demonstrated how to hijack a smartphone via short-range radio technology known as Near Field Communication (NFC). He created tools that forced phones to visit websites seeded with attack software. The software on the booby-trapped websites helped Mr. Miller look at and steal data held on a handset.
NFC is becoming increasingly common in smartphones as the gadgets are used as electronic tickets and digital wallets.
Mr. Miller, a research consultant at security firm Accuvant, demonstrated the work at the Black Hat hacker conference in Las Vegas. During his presentation, Mr. Miller showed how to attack three separate phones: the Samsung Nexus S, the Google Galaxy Nexus – which both run Android – and the Nokia N9, which runs on the MeeGo system.
Nokia has said they are aware of Mr. Miller’s work. No word from Google yet.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-19010945
The latest update sent to Pebble’s Kickstarter investors (and a few Engadget editors) is a double-edged one. After announcing that the smartwatch will be available in a new orange edition, the makers admitted that the crowd-funded wrist candy won’t be shipping to its backers on schedule in September.
No new date has been disclosed just yet, but the delay was attributed to the project having to abandon early plans of making just 1,000 smartwatches. The level of production has now ballooned, meaning the factories involved are aiming to hit 15,000 Pebbles per week ”as soon as possible.”
The Pebble is ”the first smartwatch to offer full iPhone and iOS compatibility”. It features a 1.26-inch 144×168-pixel black and white e-paper display with backlight, Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR, four buttons, a vibrating motor and a three-axis accelerometer. The battery is expected to last more than seven days on a charge.
http://www.engadget.com/2012/04/11/allerta-intros-pebble-smartwatch-inpulses-attractive-younger-s/
Bigger and thinner. That’s what the latest reports are saying about the screen on the new Apple iPhone 5.
The Cupertino, Calif., tech giant is already mass-producing the new screens, which will integrate touch capabilities into the LCD and thereby removing the need for a second layer used to make it a touch screen, according to the report. The technology, called in-cell, is about a half-millimeter thinner than what Apple uses now and is also expected to make the overall quality of the iPhone screen better.
Along with a thinner display, the iPhone is expected to receive several other changes, setting it up to receive the biggest iPhone overhaul since Apple went from the iPhone 3GS to the iPhone 4 in 2010.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/breaking/la-fi-tn-iphone-thinner-screen-20120717,0,6497279.story
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