Technology Nirvana

Ho. Lee. Crap. The first (real) teaser trailer's coming in December, but after seeing this poster, I don't know if I can't wait that long. And yes, I know tomorrow is December. [Yahoo via Ain't It Cool]

Continue reading Flexio solar powered FM radio doubles as bookmark

Flexio solar powered FM radio doubles as bookmark originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 30 Nov 2009 18:42:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

No, this isn't a still from a sci-fi movie. It's actually the Sofia and Varna Air Traffic Control Hall in Bulgaria. Pretty amazing. [Airliners.net; Thanks, Jason!]

Nook pre-orders have been sold out since November 20th, and orders placed after that have been subject to oft-delayed ship dates. Now B&N says that these backordered Nooks won't ship until January 11th, even later than reported this morning.

Remember, if you ordered a Nook before November 20th, B&N promises it'll make it by Christmas—but if you waited until after the 20th, your only options are to wait until the backordered Nooks start shipping on January 11th, or fight your way through the likely crowds at the few high-traffic retail stores that'll have them on December 7th. We're also hearing about more general shifting of ship dates—anybody pre-order one and have their estimated time of arrival changed? [Barnes & Noble via Engadget]

For the last six months, you may have noticed that some of your favorite apps on Facebook Platform carried a special badge deeming them to be “Facebook Verified”. These apps “passed Facebook’s review for trustworthy user experiences”, and were given both greater exposure in the App Directory and less restrictive limits on the number of messages they could send to users. And tomorrow, just over six months after the program launched, Facebook is killing off Verified Apps for good.

This shouldn’t come as a surprise: Facebook announced plans to end the program in late October, and has been Emailing developers about it for weeks. But now that Verified Apps are going away, it’s a good time to look back at the long, convoluted road Facebook took to a program that was ultimately very shortlived.

The Verified Apps program has been anything but a smooth ride for developers. It was first announced at the Facebook developer conference in July 2008, with the intention of helping users identify the most trustworthy apps on the platform. In return for meeting Facebook’s guidelines, apps would be rewarded with bonuses like advertising credits and relaxed rules on how many notifications and messages they could send to users.

More concrete details about the program were revealed the following November, when Facebook opened up the program to applications. Developers were charged a $375 fee to apply, which we likened to a protection racket. But after developers paid their money, Facebook went silent about the program for half a year. That understandably led to growing developer unrest. Finally, nearly a year after it was first announced, Verified Apps made its debut in May 2009.

But Verified Apps was only supposed to be a stepping stone to the site’s true cream of the crop. The most elite class of applications was to be called “Great Apps”, and launched with iLike and Causes as inaugural members. But that was another false start. Two months after the launch of Verified Apps, Facebook revealed that it was canceling its plans for its Great Apps program and demoting current members to regular Verified Apps. Or, as Facebook put it, they were getting rolled into the same thing, so Verified Apps were getting the benefits that would have been reserved for Great Apps.

Despite these logistical hurdles, developers certainly benefited from the program. For example, CampusBuddy, a verified app we covered in September, has grown from 60,000 to over 150,000 monthly active users. CEO Michael Moradian says that the company will especially miss the “extra boosts” that applications received as part of the program because they helped virality. But while CampusBuddy would have liked to see the program continue, Moradian acknowledges that times may be changing. You can see his blog about the news here.

So why is Facebook getting rid of Verified Apps? Facebook gives the following explanation:

We are standardizing the idea of verification to apply to all of the applications on Facebook Platform. We are evolving the program to improve the overall user experience and ensure that applications on Facebook Platform meet verification standards. We intend to make sure that the experience that our users have on Platform is of the same quality as they experience elsewhere on Facebook, which is something that we are constantly asked for by developers.

In other words, Facebook wants every app to be trustworthy. To do that, they’re planning “to expand [the] team responsible for policy enforcement on Platform so that they can support the upholding of the principles we’ve introduced as part of our roadmap.” It’s not really clear why they wouldn’t have done this from the start.

The timing is certainly suspect. Some of the companies we called out in our ScamVille posts for using scammy offers, like Zynga, have some of their apps Verified. Granted, Facebook announced the decision to end Verified Apps a few days before we first broke the Scamville story, but they’ve been aware of the infringing games, offers, and ads for a long time. In effect, they’ve been stamping their seal of approval on games using tactics that are the target of a class-action lawsuit.

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I’m pretty sure I wrote the complete opposite story several days ago, but who cares, right? It’s cold and rainy and there’s not much else to talk about. So! As you’re probably well aware, Jay Leno’s new show isn’t doing too well. Why is that? Well, you can try to sit down and analyze if the show is any good or not (note: I haven’t seen the show), or if the show’s earlier time slot isn’t conducive to that type of show. You know, just try to examine what’s going on. That, or you can blame those damn DVRs for ruining everything. Let’s go with that one.

DVRs are now in one-third of Americans households. In the past year, according to Nielsen data, NBC has lost an average rating of 1.8. Simultaneously, DVRs use is up by a ratings point of 1.4.

Coincidence? Maybe, but that’s not how the powers that be are reacting.

Network executives are complaining that, yes, people can skip commercials when viewing shows via DVR. At the same time, they admit that they’d rather have DVR viewers than no viewers at all. That sounds like having their cake, and eating it, too.

Leno’s new show is an interesting one to study. It’s the first really big show to have launched in the DVR era, one that NBC put an awful lot of money behind. (Or don’t you remember all the ads for Leno when the show first debuted?) NBC wanted to make it a nightly show, as opposed to weekly like Saturday Night Live (which would have made it a lot easier to come up with material), so that it would be “DVR-proof.” Like, you can’t DVR the show because he’s talking about today’s news… today.

Only that didn’t happen at all.

If people know that a show is all about topical humor, why would they go back and watch Monday’s show on Thursday night (when they have two hours free)? Let’s assume that tonight Leno runs Tiger Woods jokes, but that on Wednesday, I don’t know, Rush Limbaugh slips on a banana peel while at a political rally. So, do you want to hear Tiger woods jokes or Rush Limbaugh banana peel jokes?

You know what I mean. Because the show is so tied to the day’s events, unless you watch it on the day of release it won’t be worth your while.

So, not DVR-proof but rather DVR cryptonite.

It’s one thing to watched a recorded sitcom a few days later, but a recorded, topical, variety show? That’s a hard sell.

This is before you even factor in that today’s 18-49 year-olds aren’t necessarily going to either A) sit down and watch some TV show live or B) a few days later on DVR delay. We live in an age of streaming Netflix movies, Spotify, iTunes, Xbox Live, PSN, Steam, Twitter, nook and Kindles, etc.

Believe it or not, people can entertain themselves these days without having to sit back and watch TV.

And here’s another idea: maybe Leno’s show just isn’t any good? Again, I haven’t seen it, but I can’t imagine it’s easy coming up with material five days a week, so maybe the product suffers? I never found Leno funny during his run on The Tonight Show, but I know he’s a funny guy. You have to play to your audience. He can’t exactly get away with comedy club-level content on NBC, now can he?

In conclusion, I’m not sure that DVRs, per se, have killed Leno’s show. That’s a gross oversimplification of what’s probably going on: people’s media consumption habits are changing, and NBC relied on people staying in tune with the old model.

But what do I know, I’m over here trying to figure out if I should go AMD or Intel with a gaming PC I’m very close to building.

When it comes to multitools, you can never have enough functions and the Pocket Tool X Piranha really takes that thought to heart. I can't even figure out half the things it's supposed to do. Can you?

I know that there's at least a bottle opener, a nail puller, a scraper pry ends, a double-ended bit holder, a bunch of wrenches on this thing, but it somehow looks like you're getting some sort of hidden functions for your $50. I just don't know what they are. [PocketToolX via Wired via Engadget]

Continue reading Xbox 360 controller ingeniously hacked for NES use

Xbox 360 controller ingeniously hacked for NES use originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 30 Nov 2009 18:08:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Looks like ASUS' newest Maximus III Extreme motherboard brings Bluetooth control.Yes, you read that right. You'll really be able to tweak settings and parameters such as speeds and temperature using a Bluetooth-enabled phone.

Aside from the phone-control feature, this motherboard will come with support for up to 5 PCIe x8 connections, SATA 6G, and USB 3.0 technology. Unfortunately there's no release date or pricing information yet. [Asus via PC Perspective via Engadget]

The G-Drive external hard drive line has been out for a bit now. But the latest model is loaded with the Hitachi 2TB 7200RPM 3.5-inch hard drive, which means I had to check it out. Let’s just say, this boy is big, bad, and fast.

Features

• 2TB 7200RPM SATA II hard drive
• eSATA, FW800, FW400, USB 2.0 interfaces
• White LED strobe light
• MSRP of $349.99

Pros

• Fast
• Quiet
• Sexy

Cons

• Pricey

Design

Let’s get one thing out of the way first. This could be the best-looking external hard drive on the market. It looks amazing even if you don’t have a Mac Pro. It’s housed in an aluminum enclosure with a modestly-sized heat sink on the bottom and a very bright activity light that could double as a strobe on the front. At 2.6 lbs, it’s actually quite beefy, too. The backside houses the power rocker and all the ports: a Kensginton lock port, eSATA, twin FW800, USB2.0, and the power input. It’s just an external hard drive, folks. Really nothing fancy here.

Thankfully the drive is as solid as it looks. Each piece is milled from aluminum and held together with counter-sunk screws. It’s really quite beautiful and simple but you’ll void the warranty if you tear yours apart.

Performance

Speed and sound. That’s the name of this game. Who cares if it looks gorgeous but is as slow as a snail? So I ran a few files through each one of the interfaces and came away satisfied.

A 6.7GB file

• eSATA = 1:34 @ 71MB/s
• FW800 = 1:54 @ 59MB/s
• USB 2.0 = 4:27 @ 25MB/s

Those numbers are right on par with what a 7200RPM hard drive with a 32MB cache should do. Of course eSATA was the fastest but Firewire 800 isn’t a slouch either. For comparison, a USB 2.0 bus-powered drive transferred the same file in 4:48 @ 24MB/s.

Unlike a lot of other external hard drives, the G-Drive doesn’t make that much noise. I heard occasional clicks of the hard drive but it’s definitely one of the quieter drives I’ve heard. The solid aluminum enclosure and noise dampening feet are probably to thank for that.

Features

As the Mac-inspired design suggests, the drive is aimed at the OS X crowd, but it works just fine on PCs too. The hard drive comes HFS+ formatted and Time Machine ready, but the included software, or Windows’ Disk Management tool can easily reformat it to NTFS.

Surprisingly, given the $349 price tag, there isn’t any included backup software. I guess Hitachi feels most buyers are probably Mac users and therefore will stick with Time Machine. Still, some users might appreciate and use a basic backup software program.

Overall

The 2TB G-Drive delivers. It can hold a crap-ton of data and manages to keep its transfer speeds up with the best thanks to the fast Hitachi hard drive.  Plus, it looks great next to a Mac or a PC. Too bad the $349 MSRP sets it north of most other options and therefore out of sight for some potential buyers.

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